The Russian Revolution: A New History by Sean Mcmeekin, and: Cuba's Revolutionary World by Jonathan C. Brown

We are in the throes of another season of revolutionary commemorations. Having recently observed the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution (1949), and the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution (1959), just to name a few, the moment seems ripe for scholarly revisionism. Though the twentieth-century revolutions can be classed among the best studied of historical phenomena, within individual subfields one finds a pervasive sense that more remains to be said and uncovered. In part, this stems from the continued politicization of such histories, with some revolutions still—at least nominally—ongoing. As a consequence of this politicization, historians have also confronted the problem of halting (and, at times, nonexistent) declassification of official sources. These very obstacles, however, have also contributed to the lingering mythos of revolution, as well as the scholarly determination to analyze and deconstruct it.

Such efforts have principally taken two forms. On one hand, we continue to witness the publication of textured, close studies of novel topics, often driven by previously untapped sources. This work promises to offer new insights into revolutionary master narratives from a grounded, even microhistorical, perspective, or to revisit oft-touted revolutionary accomplishments with new evidence in hand. On the other hand, historians have also continued to aim big, producing new master narratives of their own, often in direct juxtaposition with—if not outright contradiction to—revolutionary state imaginaries. The Russian Revolution by Sean McMeekin and Cuba's Revolutionary World by Jonathan Brown are particularly interesting examples of the latter form, as both scholars aim to situate their respective revolutions not only in national but also international perspective. In looking beyond national/imperial borders, McMeekin and Brown find compelling historical evidence and new archival material with which to reimagine what remain deeply politicized subjects. Internationalizing the Russian and Cuban Revolutions thus provides new insights into revolutionary process and its consequences for the world beyond its doors.

In McMeekin's case, this orientation is the product of a body of work with an impressively broad cast, stretching well beyond Russia's borders. Having analyzed in previous books the intertwined histories of Eastern and Western Europe in the early twentieth century, McMeekin is well positioned to return to the Russian Revolution with a variety of regional histories, influences, and archives in mind. He marshalls that background to a task many Russianists before him have taken on: that of moving away from revolutionary and especially Marxist-Leninist teleologies. In the place of "parables," he proposes to base his analysis in the "solid ground of fact," particularly those facts to be found in the archive (p. xiii). Though this commitment is far from novel, McMeekin nonetheless makes a solid case that its urgency remains undiminished in light of the contemporary romanticization of Soviet history in Russia. In moving away from dialectical interpretations with foregone conclusions, McMeekin thus stresses conjuncture and the many turning points at which things might have taken a different course. In his analysis, the tsarist regime was not doomed to collapse, nor were the Bolsheviks its most obvious—or even likely—successors. One finds here a bit more sympathy for the tsar (and Rasputin!) than was once customary, and deep skepticism and even cynicism about Lenin in particular and the Bolsheviks in general.

The thrust of The Russian Revolution is narrative, and the book takes readers from the lead-up to the failed 1905 Revolution to the aftermath of its successor in 1917. The emphasis is largely on political and military history, with occasional attention to social and cultural conditions across the empire. McMeekin draws on a robust secondary scholarship in crafting this broad narrative, but fruitfully pairs it with new archival finds from within and beyond Russia. As McMeekin's previous work would suggest, he is invested in drawing out the connections between international events and their implications for revolutionary politics, while still working against the prevalent argument that it was the desperation wrought by World War I that accounted for the 1917 Bolshevik takeover.

Instead, McMeekin emphasizes several key factors. A predominant leitmotif of the book is the sheer incompetence and myopia of the liberal forces who had conspired to bring down the tsar. The author argues that their blunders, particularly on the battleground, doomed them to surprising irrelevance, given that they were once the tsar's most likely successors, especially after Nicholas II's decision to bring Russia into the war proved so disastrous. In contrast, the Bolsheviks were, by McMeekin's account, a relatively marginal force on the Russian political scene, in part because many of their leaders had been forced into exile. Yet, through sheer cunning and (McMeekin would add) unscrupulousness, they managed to catapult themselves into leadership roles in the midst of a complicated international struggle that they were also, he proposes, not terribly qualified to direct.

Key here was the position taken by the Bolsheviks in opposition to the continuation of the war; as McMeekin argues, "It was on the peace plan, and it alone, that the Bolsheviks gained a solid foothold with the Russian public" (p. 347). They also managed to recruit large numbers of servicemen to their side, which proved critical, alongside outright repression, to helping them gain and retain control. At several points, McMeekin also highlights the importance of Bolshevik propaganda in achieving this end, though his general disinterest in ideology leaves this point somewhat underdeveloped. But the smoking gun here lies on the German side of things. Drawing on new archival sources, McMeekin portrays Lenin as a turncoat, willing to accept German money and support to achieve his political goals while Russia was ostensibly at war with the Triple Alliance. These ties were controversial at the time, even leading to an investigation of the Bolsheviks for treason. But such connections did not end there. The Bolsheviks had subordinated national battle lines to their overriding interest in extricating Russia from the war and, when it was over, they would turn to Germany for a trade deal that facilitated the expansion of Lenin's New Economic Policy after several years of "War Communism."

McMeekin draws damning moral lessons from the Bolsheviks' German entanglement. In addition to traditional criticisms of the party's undemocratic and repressive nature, he has revitalized the charge that they were more than a little slippery in their national loyalties. Uncomfortable for some readers will be the cautionary messaging that follows this conclusion in the final pages of the book: "Today's Western socialists," McMeekin writes, "dreaming of a world where private property and inequality are outlawed, where rational economic development is planned by far-seeing intellectuals, should be careful what they wish for. They may just get it" (p. 352). For a book that aims to grounditselfinfactsand thereby dismantle "parables," one wonders about the analytical soundness, let alone relevance, of this narrative endpoint.

Notably eschewing cautionary tales and grand narratives, Jonathan Brown nonetheless covers kindred ground in his well-researched (and equally lengthy) Cuba's Revolutionary World. The book situates the Cuban Revolution in hemispheric political context, particularly during its radical first decade (1959–1968). His goal is to explore the "changes in transnational relations provoked by social revolution on the biggest island in the Caribbean Sea" (p. 7). Compared to other major twentieth-century Latin American revolutions, Brown finds the Cuban Revolution to have been uniquely consequential in the international sphere, not least because of the volatile Cold War context into which it exploded. In particular, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as between the Soviet Union and China, came to bear on the path Cuba charted for itself as a hemispheric revolutionary agent in its own right. As a result of Cuba's dedication to this mission, Brown argues, "At no time in American history—before or since—did Washington spend so much effort and treasure on Latin America than it did between 1959 and 1968" (p. 14).

Yet Cuba's Revolutionary World is not simply another study of the mythical battle between David and Goliath, though it certainly contributes to a well-established historiography on Cuba–U.S. relations after 1959.³ Instead, the book follows several interrelated threads: the consolidation of Fidel Castro's increasingly radical revolutionary government and its crucial but often challenging relationship with the Soviet Union; the emergence of oppositional forces, first within and then beyond the island; the entanglement of the U.S. government with various counterrevolutionary factions; and, perhaps most significantly, the direct and often military interventions of Cuba and the United States in Latin American politics writ large, what Brown refers to as their "secret war." We might summarize the analytical thrust of these themes in his words: "the Castro regime exported both its revolution and its counterrevolution" (p. 11). That is, Cuban revolutionary and counterrevolutionary politics were hemispheric in scope and consequence.

In his Introduction and Conclusion, Brown makes two overarching arguments that are sustained, with varying degrees of success, over the course of the book. On one hand, the author proposes that the Cuban Revolution was a principal catalyst for the rise of military governments in many countries across Latin America. This is paradoxical, of course, because Castro and Che Guevara ostensibly aimed to do just the opposite: to spread revolution, not counterrevolution. Yet the cumulative effect of their missionary efforts, combined with both direct and indirect U.S. influence, was to overturn a largely democratic electoral scene, leaving military juntas in its wake.

Though Brown does not present his Latin American case studies as evidence of Cuban culpability for this outcome, he does highlight one surprising area of agreement between Havana and Washington: neither of them were terribly committed to preventing it. Early on, the Cuban leadership concluded that democratically elected governments in Latin America were not necessarily congenial to their interests—that revolutionary upheaval might still be called for in such cases. In a parallel fashion, several U.S. presidential administrations proved to be equally reluctant to step up and defend democratic governments. Preventing another Cuba loomed too large in their strategic calculations; as Brown suggests, U.S. "opposition to Cuba trumped all other policies for Latin America" (p. 455).

More novel is Brown's attention to the surprising political diversity among the military regimes that assumed power throughout the 1960s and 1970s. While some efforts to arrest (often Cuban-inspired) domestic radicalism produced repressive and bloody regimes—most famously, in Argentina and Brazil—in other cases, such as those of Panama and Peru, military governments leaned increasingly left and in a pro-Cuba direction. Meanwhile, Venezuela witnessed one of the most enduring guerrilla struggles and the survival of electoral governance. To explain these diverse outcomes, Brown invokes Latin American "agency." If Washington and Havana wielded inordinate influence, he argues, "it was for [Latin Americans] to choose whether to steer their nations to the left, or to the right, or straight on to democratic transition" (p. 14).

Often, though, it seems like the issue is more one of context. There was good reason for Panamanians of different stripes, for example, to be hostile to U.S. efforts to exert control over the Canal Zone. Similarly, in Venezuela, Brown persuasively points to how a distinct national history, including the recent retreat from militarism in politics and an economic upturn, may have contributed to the survival of elected government. But context, of course, is not equivalent to agency. If Latin American elites sometimes exercised a surprising degree of control over the political destinies of their nations—measured here by their ability to defy Washington or chart a non-Cuban path to populist governance—that does not mean that "Latin Americans" writ large enjoyed the same kind of agency. In fact, one might draw exactly the opposite conclusion from the book's chapters: that the "secret war" between Washington and Havana was most costly to the people who benefited the least from it, namely, ordinary Latin American civilians. At times, one wishes Brown had made more use of the vibrant scholarship on the regional reverberations of the Cuban Revolution, written largely by Latin American historians drawing on newly declassified sources in their respective archives. Such work might have allowed him to deepen his claims regarding the degree to which both leaders and ordinary people found room to maneuver in the bipolar world of the Latin American Cold War.

Nonetheless, both Brown and McMeekin have given their respective subfields, not to mention the field of comparative revolutionary history, much to chew on in their ambitious, well-researched books. Above all, they show us what can be gained from thinking beyond national borders. As they both persuasively argue, international events shaped both the Russian and Cuban Revolutions from their genesis, and would continue to do so through their radicalization and institutionalization. Just as consequentially, both revolutions would themselves become vital actors on the world stage, ushering in new rules for hemispheric and global engagement. In order to capture these reverberations, scholars must also be poised to think and work across national borders.