Letter: Baffled by 1917? Just ask Trotsky

Sir: As a research historian I am very much in favour of Andrew Marr's suggestion that we "should honour the people in disorganised archives who burrow through individual life stories" ("Makers of their own tragedy", 26 March). I am less happy however at his implication that Orlando Figes has somehow written the history of the Russian Revolution according to Tony Blair.

What Figes has done is to uncover a number of interesting new details about the revolution while adding very little to our overall understanding of it. This is mainly because Figes, focusing on what the Russian people themselves did, misses the huge significance of the Western attack on the revolution from 1918. The revolution survived, but most of those who made it were killed in the misnamed Civil War with the White armies.

For a general understanding of 1917 and after, John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World and Trotsky's mammoth History of the Russian Revolution remain by far the best guides. To these it is the task of the research historian, I'm afraid, merely to add footnotes of qualification or embellishment.

KEITH FLETT

Convenor, London Socialist Historians Group

London N17