Published by Primary Source Microfilm

Based on the holdings of Harvard University's Houghton Library and supplemented with valuable materials from other sources, Russian Revolutionary Literature offers more than 1,000 books, broadsides and pamphlets by both anonymous and well-known authors in and around Russia. This classic collection originated from a box of materials on the revolutionary movement offered in 1896 by Ivan Panin, the American correspondent of the Geneva publication Obshchee delo. From that box came such rare titles as Listok Narodnoi voli, Nabat, Obshchee delo and Vestnik Narodnoi voli.

Now greatly expanded, this collection goes as far back in time as the report of a commission on the 1825 Decembrist uprising. It also includes material by Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) to whom scholars trace the origins of Russian socialism, along with the writings of Bakunin, Chernyshevskii, Tkachev, Plekhanov, Kropotkin, Chernov, Martov, Trotsky and Lenin. In addition to books, pamphlets and journals by these and other authors, there are hundreds of ephemeral pieces, mostly anonymous or pseudonymous, which were distributed among the workers and peasants, particularly before and during the revolution of 1905.

This collection features the fiery and analytic writings of various groups and intellectual persuasions from the early anarchists and populists to the Socialist Revolutionary Party and Lenin's Russian Social Democrat Labor Party. Most of this revolutionary material was published abroad or on underground presses within Russia, but Russian Revolutionary Literature also provides a number of legally issued publications of major authors, monarchist broadsides and official Tsarist publications about the revolutionary movement.

Arranged into six sections in alphabetical author-title order, this collection includes:

• 774 books and pamphlets from before 1917

• 152 broadsides issued before 1917

• 11 broadsides issued by Monarchist groups

• 137 periodical--including Iskra, Anarkhist, Golos Sotsial' demokrata, Nakanune, Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, Vol'noe slovo, Vpered and Zaria

• Five Tsarist publications

A special group of 89 broadsides issued during and after 1917 offering a fascinating view of the turbulent struggle for power and the confusion in the state after the abdication of the Tsar.

Russian Revolutionary Literature Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University: A Descriptive Guide and Key to the Collection on Microfilm, compiled by Kenneth E. Carpenter, is a catalogue of Harvard's collection of Russian Revolutionary Literature, mostly printed before 1917. This bibliography also includes several indices.

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