Telling October

Frederick C. Corney is Assistant Professor of History at The College of William & Mary.

A brief review can hardly do justice to this rich study, which combines extensive archival research with an innovative methodology. Arguing that memory is not innate but rather shaped in the ongoing process of its recollection and narration. Corney places the dynamic production of memory at center stage. The approach and argument are largely persuasive.... Telling October deserves a wide readership not only among historians of Russia but also among scholars interested in the history of revolutions and the problem of memory more broadly. It could also be usefully integrated into advanced undergraduate and graduate teaching on the Russian revolution.(Slavic Review) In this path-breaking and most stimulating book, Corney examines the history of the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution from a new perspective. Instead of focusing his attention on the events of that year and those leading up to it, the author explores how these events were interpreted during the first decade after 1917.... This theoretically sophisticated book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject and pays special attention to ritual practices, how language was used, and other aspects of memory culture.(Choice) The events of October 1917 did not become 'the October Revolution' until the Bolshevik revolutionaries who came to power undertook a concerted effort to make it so. This is the thesis of Frederick C. Corney's excellent new book, Telling October.... This is an important book and one well worth reading. The institutionalization of the memories of October had to be carefully managed, as Corney shows. His book is an excellent antidote to both Soviet and Western accounts which simply focus on the Military Revolutionary Committee, as if the Bolshevik party make the October Revolution in ten days. Rather, as the reader will find out, it was the memories of the October Revolution that had to be carefully crafted.(The Russian Review)