April 1917
The Red Wheel, Node IV, Book 1
Will be published approx. on 1. November 2025
Book
Hardback
624 pages
978-0-268-21052-6 (ISBN)
Description
April 1917, Book 1, captures the division and helplessness of Russia's first Revolutionary rulers, paving the way for the victory of the ruthless Bolsheviks later that year.
One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. April 1917-the fourth node-shows the intractable divisions that would lead Russia to catastrophic Communist dictatorship and civil war. If the first three nodes of The Red Wheel form its first act, "The Revolution," April 1917 opens its second act, "The Rule of the People."
The action of Book 1 (of two) is set during April 11-May 5, 1917. Book 1 presents a shift toward a more radical revolution and an increase in political turmoil. The Provisional Government comes under fire for its "bourgeois" capitalism and continuing commitment to World War I. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returns from exile and delivers his April Theses in Petrograd, actively sowing seeds of division. He declares that the revolution is not complete and openly calls for civil war, outlining a radical plan to overthrow the Provisional Government and seize power for the Soviets. Amid the chaos and rising tide of Bolshevism, the elements of resistance, and decency, slowly begin to awaken.
One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. April 1917-the fourth node-shows the intractable divisions that would lead Russia to catastrophic Communist dictatorship and civil war. If the first three nodes of The Red Wheel form its first act, "The Revolution," April 1917 opens its second act, "The Rule of the People."
The action of Book 1 (of two) is set during April 11-May 5, 1917. Book 1 presents a shift toward a more radical revolution and an increase in political turmoil. The Provisional Government comes under fire for its "bourgeois" capitalism and continuing commitment to World War I. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returns from exile and delivers his April Theses in Petrograd, actively sowing seeds of division. He declares that the revolution is not complete and openly calls for civil war, outlining a radical plan to overthrow the Provisional Government and seize power for the Soviets. Amid the chaos and rising tide of Bolshevism, the elements of resistance, and decency, slowly begin to awaken.
Reviews / Votes
"The Red Wheel and The Gulag Archipelago have been called Solzhenitsyn's two 'cathedrals.' You cannot fully understand the horrors of communism and the history of the 20th century without reading them." -New York Journal of Books"Despite its relentless focus on political events, The Red Wheel paradoxically instructs that politics is not the most important thing in life. To the contrary, the main cause of political horror is the overvaluing of politics itself. It is supremely dangerous to presume that if only the right social system could be established, life's fundamental problems would be resolved. Like the great realist novelists of the nineteenth century, Solzhenitsyn believed that." -The New York Review of Books
"[A] magisterial depiction of the long, slow collapse of the Tsarist regime in which everybody gets a voice, but nobody feels that he or she can prevent the worst of it. Eerily prescient for the binary confusions of the present." -VoegelinView
"This is the principal work of the Nobel laureate's life, to which Solzhenitsyn dedicated several decades and into which poured all his thoughts about the senseless chaos of the modern and postmodern worlds, all told through the prism of that most contingent of events, the Russian Revolution." -The New Criterion
"If Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago presented a mindset-changing view of the history of the USSR, the historical novels that make up his epopee The Red Wheel are a counterweight to the heroics of the October Revolution." -The Russian Review
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Notre Dame IN
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
6 maps - 6 Maps
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 43 mm
Weight
998 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-268-21052-6 (9780268210526)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2025
University of Notre Dame Press
€30.49
Available for download
Persons
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Nobel Prize laureate in literature, was a Soviet political prisoner from 1945 to 1953. His story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) made him famous, and The Gulag Archipelago (1973) further unmasked Communism and played a critical role in its eventual defeat. Solzhenitsyn was exiled to the West in 1974. He ultimately published dozens of plays, poems, novels, and works of history, nonfiction, and memoir, including In the First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Red Wheel epic, The Oak and the Calf, and Between Two Millstones.
Clare Kitson is a Russian literary translator. She is co-translator of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2.
Clare Kitson is a Russian literary translator. She is co-translator of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2.
Content
Calendar of Revolution
Introduction: 11 April - 24 April
Chapters 1 - 8
25 April - 1 May
Chapters 9 - 40
2 May - 5 May
Chapters 41 - 91
Introduction: 11 April - 24 April
Chapters 1 - 8
25 April - 1 May
Chapters 9 - 40
2 May - 5 May
Chapters 41 - 91