The People's Economics

When we learn about revolutions it often looks like there was a sudden change from one regime to another. I doubt that it is really like that, presumably people's day to day lives continue as before, and they may well not see the change at the time as anything like a big as history makes it. Arthur Ransome was in the thick of things, so I'm hoping that this book will show how things played out following the Russian revolution. There's also the question of whether there were things that could have happened differently and led to a less autocratic society. Since Ransome is best known for his children's stories, I'm also hoping that this book will be an entertaining read.

The sample doesn't get on to the actual work, just the introduction by Paul Foot, but that has plenty of useful information. It seems that Ransome did see the revolution as something huge, and certainly sympathised with its aims. The introduction mentions later works Ransome wrote on the progress of the revolution, but these seem harder to get hold of. This is a shame, as it would have been very interesting to see whether Ransome was disillusioned by how things turned out. It would be good if a publisher could put these related works into one volume. I'll just have to be content with Ransome's view of these six weeks.