IN-DEPTH REVIEW: Bolshevik Hybrid Warfare.

Whenever one is reviewing a long book about a narrow subject, one must provide the reader with motivation as much as explanation. Laura Engelstein’s Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War 1914-1921 is a detailed but readable history of the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Russian Civil War, and the birth of the Soviet Union. It manages a clean structure, well-organized chronologically into six parts and, within those parts, into chapters laying out the course of events in different regions of the hemisphere-spanning Russian empire and giving voice to the mosaic complexity of the Eastern Front, the revolution, and the civil war. What the book has going for it, compared to projects of similar scope like Orlando Figes’ A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 or classics by Shiela Fitzpatrick or Richard Pipes (both entitled The Russian Revolution),[1]is a relentless commitment to the geographic diversity within which the revolution occurred and the ever-shifting organizations and coalitions operating in that geography. This commitment to the sheer scale of the revolution gives the book enduring value and insight for those interested in strategy today, particularly in terms of political warfare.

This one has gone (near) the top of my ever-lengthening Kindle to-read list.