Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This collection of poems and short stories combines literature from the start of the Russian Revolution around 1917 to the Russian Civil War. It features of broad spectrum of authors and opinions, some of them stood wholeheartedly behind the revolution, others only did at first and realized later it was not what they wanted and others again hated what was happening.

The first third of the book consists out of poetry. Before each poems we get a good introduction to the poets’ life and the current political situation in Russia. This definitely added a lot of depth and helped me understand this time period quite a bit better.
The second part of the book consists out of prose and each short story had an explanatory introduction prefacing it. Some of the stories were fictional, others were not. I quite enjoyed reading them, it gave me a very vivid picture of the historical situation in Russia. It sometimes like reading a live report of the civil war and it was an interesting insight in people’s lives.

As I sadly don’t really know anything about the Russian Revolution this collection definitely made me interested in reading more about that time period. It however made it sometimes hard for me to really understand what was going on exactly and I kind of want to read up historical facts about that time period and re-read this anthology. Perhaps I will enjoy it more.