The 1905 Russian Revolution

Alexander Shlyapnikov’s Writings

Alexander Shlyapnikov author Barbara C Allen editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Haymarket Books

Publishing:17th Nov '26

£40.00

This title is due to be published on 17th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

The 1905 Russian Revolution cover

A new English edition of Alexander Shlyapnikov’s memoirs, showing how a working-class provincial youth from a religious dissenter family became a Marxist revolutionary.

These translations by Barbara C. Allen include Shlyapnikov’s memoirs about his childhood and youth, as well as his reflections on the history of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. The book comprises a brief published autobiography, an unpublished memoir of Shlyapnikov’s childhood, a short fictional piece based on his early experience of factory work, a published historical survey of the 1905 Revolution in Russia, and three article-length published memoir-histories about his early activities in the revolutionary underground and his leadership of a revolutionary organisation in the town of Murom.


“With impeccable scholarship and deep knowledge of the subject, Barbara Allen's book restores the words and experience of an heroic and tragic revolutionary, Alexander Shlyapnikov, who in his commitment to workers offered an alternative to the hyperstatist turn of the Bolsheviks, and the top-down control of the very people who had made the revolution of 1917 [...] The lessons learned from reading these early writings by a faithful son of the working class belie the easy conclusion that revolutions must lead away from the emancipatory aspirations of the many to the tyranny of a few.” —Ronald Grigor Suny, author of Stalin: Passage to Revolution




“Thanks to Allen’s superb translations, we hear Shlyapnikov—metalworker, underground organizer, future leader of the Workers’ Opposition—in his own, often wry voice, evoking the working-class world that formed his lifelong militancy and his vision of socialism grounded in workers’ capacity to organize and govern for themselves. [...] Victor Serge recognized Shlyapnikov and his comrades as an honorable current of the defeated revolution, one that had not gone morally or politically bankrupt. With exceptional scholarship and care, Allen restores that lost revolutionary tradition to us.”
—Suzi Weissman, author of Victor Serge: A Political Biography



ISBN: 9798888909096

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

494 pages