Immagine dell'autore.

Evan Mawdsley

Autore di The Russian Civil War

14+ opere 486 membri 6 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Evan Mawdsley is format professor of International History at the University of Glasgow, UK.

Comprende il nome: Evan Mawdsley

Opere di Evan Mawdsley

Opere correlate

Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921 (1997) — Collaboratore — 28 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Data di nascita
1945-06-11
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
UK
Nazione (per mappa)
United Kingdom
Istruzione
University of Chicago (MA)
University of London (PhD|1972)
Attività lavorative
Professor of Modern History
Organizzazioni
University of Glasgow

Utenti

Recensioni

A thorough and believable analysis of the Soviet-Nazi war, this is not a book for those who do not know a lot about the campaigns. Nor is it a dramatic popularization of the action. It is an excellent book for understanding the reasons for what happened, and in its cold prose clearly renders the horrors of it all.
 
Segnalato
dasam | 2 altre recensioni | Jun 21, 2018 |
Hundreds of thousands died on the battlefield, tens of thousands more were executed for treason or merely found themselves of the wrong nationality and in the way of two relentlessly unpleasant sides in a war which has been described as the greatest disaster to have afflicted mankind.

Millions died of disease and hunger while fanatics fought over their own peculiar visions of what being Russian should mean. It's an unremittingly depressing and brutal history, but it succeeds by scotching the Stalinist myth that the war for Russia was caused by foreign intervention. It also demonstrates that the White armies' leaders failed, not because they were antediluvian monarchists, but because they were nothing much at all.… (altro)
 
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Paul.Bentley | 2 altre recensioni | Jul 25, 2017 |
I've read several books on the Russian Civil War, and this is the one I'd recommend as a first approach to the subject. It presents the military developments thoroughly and memorably (and has excellent maps), and has succinct and convincing accounts of the politics involved. The main thing missing is the internal peasant opposition (the "Green" movement), which Brovkin dealt with brilliantly in Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War (after this book's first edition -- in the second edition, Mawdsley recommends it to supplement his own work). A great achievement that I wholeheartedly recommend.… (altro)
 
Segnalato
languagehat | 2 altre recensioni | Aug 30, 2015 |
Well-researched but excessively detailed, and although the author makes a point of saying that he (fortunately) does not clutter the text with minute graduations of officer ranks and titles and such, there are still an enormous amount of names and proper nouns of all sorts, often with the original Russian or German name in parentheses, which sometimes make the text a bit clunky. Also, there are times when individual facts are cited without giving sufficient context, or making it clear exactly what importance the fact has, or what insight it gives.Especially in respect to cases where he cites the numbers of certain kinds of weapons each side possessed, and production numbers and so on, I sometimes felt that I was not really given a way of understanding exactly what I was being told, or judging what all these facts actually meant....On the whole, though, the load of statistics is heavy but mangeable.

He does, however, make an effort to cover all of the different aspects of this war, and, despite the difficulties of this, given the massive scale of the war in question, he covers many different topics and aspects of the conflict. Foremost, of course, he gives a very through campaign history of the Russian war--including descriptions of all the major operations (e.g., BARBAROSSA, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Kursk, BAGRATION, Berlin...) and analysis of the results ('explaining victory and defeat')--as well as some treatment of other topics, such as Nazi crimes committed in German-occupied areas, Soviet partisans, Soviet reprisals against 'collaborators', Lend-Lease and Western contributions to the Soviets, Moscow's attitudes towards Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Uprising, brief biographical sketches of (especially Soviet) commanders, and short discussions of the strategic objectives and military theories of both sides. Maps and geographic descriptions are also adequate, and mention is also made of the weather (e.g., the rasputitsa, or muddy season).

Although it can be very heavy reading--there were many battles fought on the Eastern Front, and not all of them were as famous as Stalingrad--it's fair to say that this book does provide alot of information on the Nazi-Soviet war, especially for the Russian side, and it's not a terrible introduction to the history of this immensely destructive war.

(7/10)
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
Tullius22 | 2 altre recensioni | Jul 11, 2011 |

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Statistiche

Opere
14
Opere correlate
1
Utenti
486
Popolarità
#50,828
Voto
4.1
Recensioni
6
ISBN
55
Lingue
2

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