Revolution and Counterrevolution

"Kevin Murphy has written an important book. It steers a course between the prevailing historical orthodoxy that dismisses the Russian Revolution of October 1917 as a disastrous aberration and the so-called 'revisionists' who have portrayed Stalinism as a phenomenon with strong popular roots."  ·  Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, King's College London and member of Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Committee

“…a fine study…that is meticulously researched and consistently stimulating – and one that offers an interesting worm’s-eye view of what the Revolution meant to working people.”  ·  Journal of Modern History

“Kevin Murphy has produced an outstanding and original work that is a must-read for all those interested in Soviet history…The judges of the annual Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize have fittingly chosen this book as their winner for 2005, for which they deserve congratulations.”  · Capital and Class

"Murphy draws on an abundant, varied, and multilayered documentary evidence…a tremendous contribution…we all stand in his debt."  · New Politics

"The workers of the Hammer and Sickle factory come alive here in an exciting story of struggle, victory, and defeat. Their voices ring out to us across the years, as we join them in their meetings and on the shop floor, at the height of revolutionary hopes and the defeats of the Stalin years. Murphy offers an unprecedented view of dissent and accommodation at the grassroots level."  · Wendy Goldman, Carnegie Mellon University

"Murphy has given us an impeccably researched case study of the vicissitudes of workers politics on the shop floor, which charts the rise and fall of worker activism....This is not a monolithic working class of revolutionary heroes or atomized victims, but a politically and ideologically diverse and contradictory group whose daily struggles and internal battles Murphy charts with subtlety and precision."  · Donald Filtzer, University of East London, UK

"Kevin Murphy's brilliant new study offers fresh insights into how the political struggle in Russia reverberated in the factories before, during, and after 1917. Significantly, it illuminates the many ways in which Stalinism was asserted on the shop floor."  · Andrei Sokolov, The Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences

"The archives have been open now for fifteen years and few historians of revolutionary Russia have tested previously held assumptions and interpretations of the past through systematic studies of primary source material as Murphy has achieved in this study.  · The Russian Review

“This book adds much to the literature on workers in Soviet Russia after the October Revolution. ….[it] illustrates the challenges of regarding the working class as a single entity and the value of close regional or micro-study to further develop and nuance general historical understanding of the Soviet Union.”  ·  Left History