Passage Through Armageddon offers a superb overview of the decline of Tsarist Russia and the early stages of the Bolshevik Revolution. The author, a professor at Northern Illinois University, is an acknowledged expert on this period of Russian history and he uses his mastery of the subject to paint this period in riveting detail. Passage Through Armageddon is well written and thoroughly researched but given the plethora of obscure Russian characters, it is not for the faint of heart or general reader. Readers should also note that this author tone differs from other accounts in its unflattering portrayals of the Tsar and his enemies. Overall, this book substantially enhances our knowledge of Russia's path through war and revolution in 1914-1918.

Passage Through Armageddon consists of 18 chapters divided into five parts; each part covers one year. An extensive section of footnotes and bibliography demonstrate that the author has delved deeply into Russian archival sources. There are only five maps: the 1914 East Prussian Campaign, the 1914 Galician Campaign, the 1915 Polish front, the 1916 Brusilov Offensive and Petrograd. Unfortunately, these maps are not very informative since they only display terrain and front-line traces, not strategic movements or battles. A section of 32 interesting photos complement the text.

About two-thirds of the book deals with Russia's entry into the First Word War and the role of Tsar Nicholas II in leading his country to disaster. Readers familiar with Nicholas II from Robert K. Massie's 1967 Nicholas and Alexandra will find a totally different portrayal of the Romanov couple in these pages. In Massie's sympathetic account, Nicholas was portrayed as a doting father and husband who, unfortunately, was unlucky as CEO of the Russian Empire. Lincoln wastes no ink on the tsar's family life but instead methodically lays out in detail the gross incompetence and arrogance of the last tsar. In particular, Nicholas had an uncanny ability to put incompetent men like Sukhomlinov, Ianushkevich, Bezobrazov and Sturmer in key positions where they could do the most harm. Good, honest men were discarded since they tended to voice unpleasant truths about Russia's real conditions - the tsar preferred "yes" men. Aleksandra's relationship with Rasputin - a "bogus holy man" in Lincoln's words - was critical since she coerced Nicholas into hiring and firing ministers and generals based upon the recommendations of that illiterate con man. At STAVKA headquarters, Nicholas assumed the title of supreme commander but shunned real leadership responsibilities, preferring to spend his days leisurely reading silly books or playing cards while his troops were losing battle after battle. Furthermore, Nicholas' selection of incompetent civil administrators led to a major urban food shortage amidst bumper wheat crops in rural areas. Any remaining sympathy for Nicholas is demolished by Lincoln's telling passage concerning the tsar's reaction to reports of unrest caused by hunger in the capital in 1917. After a loyal minister warned that, "the final hour is beginning to strike," and that the tsar must act, Nicholas replied that, "I can't waste time on this. I already know everything that I need to know." By the time that Nicholas abdicates in March 1917, the reader will be cheering.

Lincoln's account of Russia in the First World War is interesting and detailed. In particular, he notes that "the fall's [1914] schizophrenic mixture of victories and defeats" was odd, since Russia inflicted defeats on the Austrians and Turks, but was smashed by the Germans. The Russian army which started the war short of artillery and ammunition, was further handicapped by the foolish decision to reinforce the elderly border fortifications with large quantities of these materials - and then to abandon these forts with hardly a fight. Russia certainly suffered its share of defeats in the war, particularly Tannenberg, Gorlice-Tarnow and the Great Retreat across Poland; by the end of 1915 Russia appeared to be on the verge of defeat. Yet Lincoln demonstrates that Russia's defeat was not inevitable. Despite the tsar's moronic behavior, some good men did emerge. Men like Alekseev, Brusilov and Polivanov rebuilt the Russian armies with help from the Allies. In 1916, a revitalized Russian army under Brusilov launched the most successful Russian offensive of the war and almost took Austria out of the war, but for the inability of Nicholas to exploit success.

The last third of the book covers the revolutionary period after the fall of the tsar and the major characters are Kerenski, Kornilov, Trotsky and Lenin. Kerenski, the charismatic leader of the Provisional Government was a talker, not a doer and he mistakenly thought that the main threat to his regime came from the right, not the left. Kornilov, the military hero who sought only to restore order in the army, fell victim to a bizarre plot and was arrested by a suspicious Kerenski; however the "success" against an imagined right-wing army plot only made it easier for Lenin's Bolsheviks to overthrow the regime which now lacked an effective army. The Bolshevik Coup of November 1917 is presented as a comic-opera affair, with little fighting but much confusion. Instead of the heroic Lenin addressing grateful crowds, we see a furtive Lenin sneaking around Petrograd wearing a wig to avoid arrest but who is then barred entry into Bolshevik headquarters because he is not recognized. Trotsky is acknowledged as the ramrod of the Revolution itself, but as a naïve revolutionary who failed to impress the Germans at the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations. Indeed, Trotsky's "no peace, no war" formula prompted further German aggression and forced the Bolsheviks to sue for a humiliating armistice. The book ends with Russia's exit from the First World War and the beginning of the Civil War, a subject which the author covers in his next book, Red Victory.

I have always had an interest in St. Petersburg, Russia. I believe that stems from the wonderful depiction of the city given by Feodor Dostoevsky in "Crime and Punishment." Dostoevsky made St. Petersburg come alive more than any writer has made any other city do so.

So, it was with great interest that I bought W. Bruce Lincoln's "Sunlight at Midnight." This is the first biography of St. Petersburg that I have seen.

Unfortunately, my interest turned to displeasure almost from the start of the book. The subtitle to "Sunlight at Midnight" is "St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia." It could more aptly be subtitled "An Artistic and Architectural History of St. Petersburg with Some Other Interesting Historical Stuff Thrown In." The first chapter, "The Builders", is not an account of the struggles to build a capital city out of the swamps but an exhaustive account of the architects who built early St. Petersburg and their creations. It also contains a mind numbing account of the various styles used in the city and how they routinely changed as Russia's tsars came and went.

I accept that any city's biography will have an account of its cultural and intellectual life. I even look forward to such expositions. St. Petersburg has had an exceptional history in that regard. However, I would estimate that fully two-fifths of "Sunlight at Midnight" is given over to such study. This is too much, especially for a city such as St. Petersburg, which was the economic and bureaucratic center of an enormous empire.

Things do not get better after the first chapter. Lincoln does begin to discuss more of the non-cultural history of the city; but, he breaks it up periodically with a return to the cultural aspects of St. Petersburg's history. He never allows any kind of momentum to flow because he is constantly breaking it up by bouncing around from subject to subject.

Lincoln does give a good account of the German siege of the city during World War II but even that is not completely satisfying as he tends to concentrate on how the siege affected life amongst the intelligentsia of the city instead of the maneuvers made by the Germans and Russians to both capture the city and to defend it.

The worst mistake that Lincoln makes is with his final chapter. He makes the most blatant mistake any historian can make by summing up. The final chapter is a summary of most of what you have read over the previous chapters. If it were that easy to sum up the things I had just read, then why did I just go through the trouble of reading through everything you just wrote? is the obvious question one asks when a historian makes this blunder.

Lincoln also has the terrible habit of someone who is too close to his subject of trying to convince us that Petersburgers are somehow different from everyone else on the face of the planet. During his account of the German siege, he seems to be intimating that no other people in the world could have come through this siege in the same way that Petersburgers did. He imbues them with a superhuman capacity for sacrifice and suffering that he seems to think is found no where else in the world. The only thing unique about Petersburgers is their city's history, which Lincoln has done a great disservice with this book.

Lincoln's "Sunlight at Midnight" has some excellent moments, but is frequently superficial and a little dull. The book is primarily a cultural history of St Petersburg, featuring the usual cast of writers (Pushkin, Gogol, Belyi), poets (Blok, Akhmatova, Brodsky), and composers (Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich). The Romanov rulers and their tastes in architecture are discussed extensively, as are the Soviets and their tastes in censorship.

The first three chapters are primarily a cultural history of imperial Russia following Peter the Great's reign. They deal mostly in court affairs and architects, neither of which are particularly interesting. Next come descriptions of Petersburg's literary and musical history, which are spotty and do not compare well with the detail of Solomon Volkov's "St Petersburg".

The tone changes abruptly when we reach the late nineteenth century, and the reliance on artistic sources gives way to a more popular account of the revolutionary period. Events are well presented but the story is told too quickly. The months between abdication and Bolshevik takeover, for example, pass in a single paragraph. I would have gladly exchanged twenty early pages on the styles of palace facades for some details of the provisional government's failure and the October coup.

The chapter on the Leningrad siege is a masterpiece of narrative history, but the book unfortunately returns to cultural matters and Soviet repression of artists in the postwar period. This is interesting stuff, but not remotely as gripping as the events of the previous decades and written in a cursory style more suited to a review for a knowledgeable reader.

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of W. Bruce Lincoln, one of my favorite writers of history. His works on Russia have given me, time and again, new insight into that country, its people and history. This last work is another excellent example of his writing, marred only by what I think is some poor editing. I don't know at what stage of this work Mr. Lincoln died, but it appears that, if he had survived through the final editing stage this book would have been in a different form. There are more than a few redundancies, which should have been picked up by an alert editor, and I'm sure would have been by the author if he had been around to do so. That criticism aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this work, once again learning many new things about the Russian psyche, as brought forth through the history of St. Petersburg. There may be a bit too much about architecture in this work, but I consider it a "work in progress" that will now, unfortunately, never get into the final shape its author intended. It's a loss for all of us.

It seemed like such a good concept -- parallel bios of the two great antagonists of the Civil War. However, after a promising beginning, this book becomes so wildly inaccurate and in parts so "Oliver Stone-ish" that I personally will submit my copy for recycling rather than allow anyone else to read it. Some errors are errors of detail (the General commanding the Confederate troops on Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg was James Longstreet, not "Stonewall" Jackson). Some are chronological. Chadwick places Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign after the Seven Days' battles, where in reality it was the indispensible prelude. Sometimes the chronology becomes so muddled that events seem to occur twice. The way the text reads, it seems that Union General John Pope was beaten at Second Bull Run twice. And can anyone truly imagine Salmon Chase leading Union forces in the field?

I was particularly disturbed by the assertion that Ohio "Peace Democrat" Clement Vallandigham was arrested on President Lincoln's authority. Every other source I've ever seen asserts that General Burnside acted without any authority other than his own, and that he quickly received orders to arrest no other politicians and suppress no more newspapers without consulting Washington first. What evidence did Chadwick find that eluded Allen Nevins, Shelby Foote, and Stephen B. Oates (to name but three) missed?

When Chadwick comes to the Kilpatrick/Dahlgren raid to Richmond, things get very worrisome for anyone who's read much Civil War history (and I have). No one else that I have have read has ever asserted that the raid's purported goal of killing or kidnapping Jefferson Davis and/or other members of his administration was authorized by Abraham Lincoln himself. What evidence has Chadwick unearthed that hundreds if not thousands of other historians had never found? In addition, Chadwick is the only author that I have read that flatly pronounces the papers purportedly found on Ulric Dahlgren's body genuine. All others have at least acknowledged the possibility that they were forgeries. (For the record, incidently, Judson Kilpatrick's not-too-flattering nickname was "Kill Cavalry", not "Kill Patrick".)

I gave up on this book at page 340. My time is too precious to waste it on conspiritorial pseudo-history. I'll bet yours is , too.

Where's the Beef?

With all of the attention lavished by historians on Abraham Lincoln, and with the growing number of works on Jefferson Davis, it is curious that there have been so few comparative studies of the two men. Aside from Bruce Catton's Two Roads To Fort Sumter (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), and a few scattered articles and monographs, no scholar of the Civil War has attempted a comprehensive, systematic comparison of Lincoln and Davis. Bruce Chadwick has attempted to fill this hole with The Two American Presidents.

As the title suggests, this is a dual biography, a two-track narrative which switches back and forth between Lincoln's and Davis's stories. These twin narratives are not bad history in the sense of being inaccurate or sloppy. Chadwick wrote competently and with occasional dramatic flair, he made good use of the available primary sources, and he utilized an impressive amount of newspaper research. A casual reader without much prior knowledge of the Civil War could read The Two American Presidents and come away with a basic understanding of each man's life and career.

But Chadwick really unearthed nothing new about either man; his book is for the most part merely a pedestrian rehashing of oft-told tales. His story of Lincoln follows the standard arc which one could find in a dozen other biographies: Lincoln the savvy politician and prairie lawyer with the large measure of common sense who is smarter than most everyone around him, and who is dedicated to finding a pragmatic means to the idealistic end of killing slavery and establishing a new birth of freedom. Likewise, Chadwick's Jefferson Davis is not very original: he is the Calhounian planter and Mexican war hero who never questions slavery; a principled yet rigid man who relentlessly pursues Confederate victory but is hobbled by serious character flaws and political ineptitude. Chadwick's narrative is sprightly, but in the end this is still old wine in a new bottle. It is so old, in fact, that I found very little material worthy of substantive criticism; hence the brevity of this review.

According to the book's dust jacket, Chadwick argues that "one of several reasons why the North won and the South lost can be found in the drastically different characters of the two presidents." This is perhaps a reasonable--though by no means foregone--conclusion. It is not the "fascinating new perspective" and "startling answers" the book's jacket claims; Davis Potter made this exact argument forty years ago in a widely read essay which Chadwick does not cite (see Potter, "Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors of Confederate Defeat," in David Donald, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War [New York: Collier, 1960]).

But where does Chadwick draw these conclusions, let alone support them with evidence? I have quoted the book jacket at some length because in 490 pages of text I was unable to locate anything resembling an actual argument. The Two Presidents is a comparative study with no substantive comparative analysis. Chadwick seems to have assumed that the mere placing of a mediocre biography of Davis and a mediocre biography of Lincoln within the same cover somehow constitutes an "argument," an original contribution. It does not.

Chadwick somehow missed the point of his own book. The only value such a study might possess would lie in the new light it shed on either Lincoln and Davis themselves, or on larger subjects -- presidential leadership, for example -- which are illuminated by but transcend the two men's individual stories. Chadwick did neither, and in the end wrote a book which is of little real value to serious scholars of Lincoln, Davis or the Civil War.

Reviewed by Brian Dirck, Assistant Professor of History, Anderson University . Published by H-South (September, 2000)

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I am sure people who are interested in the American history of the latter part of the 19th century will find this book useful.