Sheila Fitzpatrick is a Russian historian at the University of Chicago. She has written and contributed to several books on Soviet and Modern Russian history. Fitzpatrick wrote a historical interpretation of the increase to power of the Bolsheviks called The Russian Revolution. Fitzpatrick did not compose an introduction on the Revolution, but rather on the advancement and decline of the Revolution; particularly social, cultural, and political themes from 1905 through the Stalinist era. The Russian Revolution includes the Stalinist revolution and the Great Purges of 1937-38.
Fitzpatrick opposed with the old-style Western understanding of 1917 accomplishments of the Bolsheviks, which frequently recognized the successful October Revolution to the organizational strengths and internal discipline of the Bolshevik Party (Fitzpatrick, 49). She says …show more content…
The war had “militarized the revolutionary political culture of the Bolshevik movement,” leading the Bolsheviks to trust upon political coercion, centralized administration, and authoritarianism as a means of survival, characteristics that would continue to be trademarks of the Party in the impending years. Fitzpatrick makes the point that the Bolsheviks abandoned the current economic policy known as War Communism in place of Lenin’s New Economic Policy known as NEP this was due to the privatization of war. It was due to Bolshevik “disillusionment” that Josef Stalin sought political opportunity. Additionally, as a minority party, the Bolsheviks found themselves governing by fiat almost as a political inevitability, and Fitzpatrick argued that the Party’s heavy support upon soldiers, sailors, and workers meant that the Bolsheviks had become an institute of individuals much less troubled with the policy of “tactful