1917

An exciting new collection of responses to the Revolution, by some of Russia's greatest writers of the twentieth century
'This is the last of you, old word — soon we'll smash you to bits.'
The passionate voices of radicals, dreamers, workers, aristocrats, satirists and romantics fill these electrifying poems and prose pieces, written between 1917 and 1919 in the full tumult of the Russian Revolution.
From apocalyptic visions to heartfelt calls for freedom, from depictions of bloody carnage to an acerbic portrait of Lenin, the writings brought together here are by turns fervent, absurd, disorienting and tragic.
Some writers — Bulgakov, Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova — are well-known, others all but forgotten; many would not survive what was to come. All speak to us a century later, re-creating the whirlwind of euphoria and terror, hopes and betrayals of that exhilarating, brutal time.
Boris Dralyuk is an award-winning translator and the Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA, where he taught Russian literature for a number of years. He is a co-editor of the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, and has translated Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry/em> and Odessa Stories, both of which are published by Pushkin Press.