ons between Nicholas II, and other monarchs. Lieven also draws comparison between the fall of the Imperial Russia, and the collapse of the Communist Russia. He attempts to fit both regimes into a certain pattern where it could aid us in predicting the future, and possibly shine some light on many current and upcoming situations. He practices topical organization in his book, where he has one main topic Nicholas II, and then brakes it down into smaller topics, relating them back to Nicholas II. His main point throughout his book is that, during the reign of Nicholas II, the political instability, and the stagnant atmosphere throughout his constantly changing empire, made ruling very difficult and even impossible in certain aspects, therefore making the Revolution of 1917 inevitable. He also points out that one of the main reasons for Nicholas II’s inability to rule the empire with a firm grip, and without so many shifts between policies, is due to his father’s unexpected death, which cut Nicholas short of his training. The latter making him ascend the throne when he hardly knew anything about ruling a country, causing him to be susceptible to many different opinions. Christopher Read, author of From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and their Revolution, 1917-21, published his book at Oxford University Press, New York, NY, in 1996. He is a historian at the University of Warwick, UK, and he specializes in Russian Revolution, Russian intelligentsia 1900-1930, Communism, and cultural revolution. Some of his other publications include: Religion, Revolution and the Russian Intelligentsia (1979), and, Culture and Power in Revolutionary Russia (1990). He is a revisionist, which means that he pays more attention to the masses. Revisionists are mainly interested with what the ‘ordinary people’ believed in, and their social and economic history. Read could also be classified as a ‘post-revisionist...
