March 1917

<p>To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution the University of Notre Dame Press is proud to publish Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's epic work <em>March 1917</em> Node III Book 1 of <em>The Red Wheel</em>.</p><p><em>The Red Wheel</em> is Solzhenitsyn's magnum opus about the Russian Revolution. Solzhenitsyn tells this story in the form of a meticulously researched historical novel supplemented by newspaper headlines of the day fragments of street action cinematic screenplay and historical overview. The first two nodes-<em>August 1914</em> and <em>November 1916</em>-focus on Russia's crises and recovery on revolutionary terrorism and its suppression on the missed opportunity of Pyotr Stolypin's reforms and how the surge of patriotism in August 1914 soured as Russia bled in World War I.</p><p><em>March 1917</em>-the third node-tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The action of Book 1 (of four) of <em>March 1917</em> is set during March 8-12. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. Bread riots in the capital Petrograd go unchecked at first and the police are beaten and killed by mobs. Efforts to put down the violence using the army trigger a mutiny in the numerous reserve regiments housed in the city who kill their officers and rampage. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition horrified by the violence scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it. Meanwhile Emperor Nikolai II is away at military headquarters and his wife Aleksandra is isolated outside Petrograd caring for their sick children. Suddenly the viability of the Russian state itself is called into question.</p><p><em>The Red Wheel</em> has been compared to Tolstoy's <em>War and Peace</em> for each work aims to narrate the story of an era in a way that elevates its universal significance. In much the same way as Homer's <em>Iliad</em> became the representative account of the Greek world and therefore the basis for Greek civilization these historical epics perform a parallel role for our modern world.</p>