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The relationship between Russian labor and Bolshevik power in the months immediately following October remains a central and contentious issue of early Soviet history. Bolshevik political legitimacy turns in large measure on the degree to which the party was able in this period to retain the support of workers whose activism in 1917 had brought the Bolsheviks to power; and the nature and extent of workers' opposition to the new regime in these early months is fundamental to our understanding of its dictatorial structure. These issues, central to the work of E. H. Carr, Leonard Schapiro, and others, have recently reemerged in the literature, both implicitly and explicitly. Whereas new books by S. A. Smith, David Mandel, and Diane Koenker on 1917 have examined carefully the social circumstances of Petrograd and Moscow workers, Schapiro's own last volume, The Russian Revolutions of 1917, takes sharp issue with historians whose work centers on “social trends, economic theories, or sociological analysis.” Roy Medvedev and Vladimir Brovkin have demonstrated how elections to local Soviets in the spring of 1918 brought extensive gains for Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, including popular majorities in all provincial capitals where elections took place; and an important new collection of materials edited by M. S. Bernshtam for Alexander Solzhenitsyn's series on modern Russian history reasserts an old Right Menshevik view, put most forcefully perhaps by Grigorii Aronson, who maintained that the Bolsheviks had been in power scarcely two months before all sympathy for them had disappeared, and the benevolent neutrality of the weeks preceding [October] gave way to a committed opposition. […] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A powerful aspect of the prevailing view of the revolution – of the white and red contrast between good democratic liberals and evil Bolsheviks – is that it makes the past very simple. This simplicity, in turn, makes the past easier to understand and to express as moral lessons for our own time. The reality of 1917 is much more complex. The revolution of 1917 – any revolution for that matter – should be thought of as a kaleidoscope Patterns fall into place and then fall apart, and then become reassembled in different patterns. In order to stress this kaleidoscopic aspect of the revolution and to emphasize the many-layered reality of 1917, I shall draw upon my own work on Moscow's working class during the revolution. When I set out to do a study of Moscow workers in 1917, I had three goals in mind. The first was to study the revolution as it happened away from Petrograd. Petrograd was a unique place: It was the center of political power, the home of the aristocratic elite, the most advanced industrial center in the country, and it was relatively near the eastern front of the world war. All these factors would surely affect the process of revolution in ways that might not be repeated elsewhere. So I turned to Moscow, not just for the sake of learning what happened in a different place, but also to understand why Moscow's experience was different, if indeed it was. In so doing, I hoped to add a new dimension to the history of 1917. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of interpretation Studying the Soviet Union is not quite like studying any other country in the world. While historians within the Soviet Union are compelled to portray their nation's past with the requisite degree of heroism and inexorable progress, in the West their colleagues face serious limitations of access to sources, the absence of basic works on aspects of Soviet history, and a variety of personal and political biases that inevitably influence the outcome of their research. Soviet historians write under the “guidance” of a political orthodoxy dictated by the party and colored in the language of Marxism-Leninism. Their Western counter-parts attempt a cool objectivity, usually by dismissing the relevance of Marxism as an analytical tool and cloaking themselves in an ostensibly “value-free” social science. International rivalries, conflicting social values, and the more mundane exigencies of forging a professional career in a competitive marketplace determine the political and cultural contexts in which histories of the USSR are written. Nevertheless, many historians on both sides of the barricades seek freedom from bias, and in recent years more and more interesting work has appeared on Russia's history, both in the West and in the Soviet Union, which prompts a reconsideration of significant parts of that experience. After nearly seventy years of studying 1917, is it possible to come to some consensus on the contours and meaning of the 1917 Revolution? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Socialist movement in Franconia entered the Nazi era bitterly divided. For the previous three months the activities of the NSDAP and the SA had centered not on the movement's external foes but on the rebellion in its midst. Under the leadership of Wilhelm Stegmann, almost the entire SA had waged a persistent and at times violent battle the immediate goal of which was to oust Julius Streicher. Behind this conflict of personalities loomed the more serious issue of the goals and methods of the NSDAP, and with the establishment of the Freikorps Franken in mid-January Stegmann had placed himself outside the Nazi movement while claiming to fight for the true aims of National Socialism – and for Adolf Hitler. Whatever chances there may have been for a successful uprising, Hitler's appointment as chancellor dealt a fatal blow to the revolt. Hitler's methods now stood vindicated, and from Hitler's victory the SA, like the National Socialist movement as a whole, sought to gain. From the beginning of February 1933 until June 30, 1934, the SA stood seemingly at the zenith of its power. Every SA man now felt himself entitled to a place among the new elite. A position in some branch of government or, better still, in the new army the SA expected Hitler to create was the reward the SA regarded as its due. Encouraged by Hitler and other Nazi leaders, the stormtroopers now had their chance to settle accounts with their erstwhile opponents. For five months after the Reichstag election of March 1933 the SA stood seemingly above the law and vented its desire for revenge on a defenseless opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]