Sean McMeekin

From an award-winning scholar comes this definitive, single-volume history that illuminates the tensions and transformations of the Russian Revolution.In The Russian Revolution , acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin traces the events which ended Romanov rule, ushered the Bolsheviks into power, and introduced communism to the world. Between 1917 and 1922, Russia underwent a complete and irreversible transformation. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Tsarist regime in the middle of World War I, the Bolsheviks staged a hostile takeover of the Russian Imperial Army, promoting mutinies and mass desertions of men in order to fulfill Lenin’s program of turning the “imperialist war” into civil war. By the time the Bolsheviks had snuffed out the last resistance five years later, over twenty million people had died, and the Russian economy had collapsed so completely that communism had to be temporarily abandoned. The first comprehensive history of these momentous events in over two decades, The Russian Revolution combines cutting-edge scholarship and a fast-paced narrative to shed new light on one of the most significant turning points of the twentieth century.

A major new history of the Second World War by a prize-winning historianWe remember World War II as a struggle between good and evil, with Hitler propelling events and the Allied powers saving the day. But Hitler's armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit the spoils of war. That role belonged to Joseph Stalin. Hitler's genocidal ambition may have unleashed Armageddon, but as celebrated historian Sean McMeekin shows, the conflicts that emerged were the result of Stalin's maneuverings, orchestrated to unleash a war between capitalist powers in Europe and between Japan and the Anglo-American forces in the Pacific. Meanwhile, the United States and Britain's self-defeating strategy of supporting Stalin and his armies at all costs allowed the Soviets to conquer most of Eurasia, from Berlin to Beijing, for Communism.A groundbreaking reassessment, Stalin's War is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the roots of the current world order.

When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand’s own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God’s will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict—much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events.As acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin reveals in July 1914, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for a small group of statesmen who, in the month after the assassination, plotted to use Ferdinand’s murder as the trigger for a long-awaited showdown in Europe. The primary culprits, moreover, have long escaped blame. While most accounts of the war’s outbreak place the bulk of responsibility on German and Austro-Hungarian militarism, McMeekin draws on surprising new evidence from archives across Europe to show that the worst offenders were actually to be found in Russia and France, whose belligerence and duplicity ensured that war was inevitable. Whether they plotted for war or rode the whirlwind nearly blind, each of the men involved—from Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and French president Raymond Poincaré—sought to capitalize on the fallout from Ferdinand’s murder, unwittingly leading Europe toward the greatest cataclysm it had ever seen.A revolutionary account of the genesis of World War I, July 1914 tells the gripping story of Europe’s countdown to war from the bloody opening act on June 28th to Britain’s final plunge on August 4th, showing how a single month—and a handful of men—changed the course of the twentieth century.

An astonishing retelling of twentieth-century history from the Ottoman perspective, delivering profound new insights into World War I and the contemporary Middle EastBetween 1911 and 1922, a series of wars would engulf the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, in which the central conflict, of course, is World War I—a story we think we know well. As Sean McMeekin shows us in this revelatory new history of what he calls the “wars of the Ottoman succession,” we know far less than we think. The Ottoman Endgame brings to light the entire strategic narrative that led to an unstable new order in postwar Middle East—much of which is still felt today.The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East draws from McMeekin’s years of groundbreaking research in newly opened Ottoman and Russian archives. With great storytelling flair, McMeekin makes new the epic stories we know from the Ottoman front, from Gallipoli to the exploits of Lawrence in Arabia, and introduces a vast range of new stories to Western readers. His accounts of the lead-up to World War I and the Ottoman Empire’s central role in the war itself offers an entirely new and deeper vision of the conflict. Harnessing not only Ottoman and Russian but also British, German, French, American, and Austro-Hungarian sources, the result is a truly pioneering work of scholarship that gives full justice to a multitiered war involving many belligerents. McMeekin also brilliantly reconceives our inherited Anglo-French understanding of the war’s outcome and the collapse of the empire that followed. The book chronicles the emergence of modern Turkey and the carve-up of the rest of the Ottoman Empire as it has never been told before, offering a new perspective on such issues as the ethno-religious bloodletting and forced population transfers which attended the breakup of empire, the Balfour Declaration, the toppling of the caliphate, and the partition of Iraq and Syria—bringing the contemporary consequences into clear focus.Every so often, a work of history completely reshapes our understanding of a subject of enormous historical and contemporary importance. The Ottoman Endgame is such a book, an instantly definitive and thrilling example of narrative history as high art.

The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends."The Berlin-Baghdad Express" tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey s hereditary enemy, Russia. Told from the perspective of the key decision-makers on the Turco-German side, many of the most consequential events of World War I Turkey s entry into the war, Gallipoli, the Armenian massacres, the Arab revolt, and the Russian Revolution are illuminated as never before.Drawing on a wealth of new sources, McMeekin forces us to re-examine Western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It is an epic tragicomedy of unintended consequences, as Turkish nationalists give Russia the war it desperately wants, jihad begets an Islamic insurrection in Mecca, German sabotage plots upend the Tsar delivering Turkey from Russia s yoke, and German Zionism midwifes the Balfour Declaration. All along, the story is interwoven with the drama surrounding German efforts to complete the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the weapon designed to win the war and assure German hegemony over the Middle East.

From an award-winning historian, a new global history of Communism When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist ideas have proliferated across the globe. In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes. Tracing Communism’s ascent from theory to practice, McMeekin ranges from Karl Marx’s writings to the rise and fall of the USSR under Stalin to Mao’s rise to power in China to the acceleration of Communist or Communist-inspired policies around the world in the twenty-first century. McMeekin argues, however, that despite the endurance of Communism, it remains deeply unpopular as a political form. Where it has arisen, it has always arisen by force. Blending historical narrative with cutting-edge scholarship, To Overthrow the World revolutionizes our understanding of the evolution of Communism—an idea that seemingly cannot die.

The catastrophe of the First World War, and the destruction, revolution, and enduring hostilities it wrought, make the issue of its origins a perennial puzzle. Since World War II, Germany has been viewed as the primary culprit. Now, in a major reinterpretation of the conflict, Sean McMeekin rejects the standard notions of the war's beginning as either a Germano-Austrian preemptive strike or a "tragedy of miscalculation." Instead, he proposes that the key to the outbreak of violence lies in St. Petersburg.It was Russian statesmen who unleashed the war through conscious policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in the Near East. Unlike their civilian counterparts in Berlin, who would have preferred to localize the Austro-Serbian conflict, Russian leaders desired a more general war so long as British participation was assured. The war of 1914 was launched at a propitious moment for harnessing the might of Britain and France to neutralize the German threat to Russia's partitioning the Ottoman Empire to ensure control of the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.Nearly a century has passed since the guns fell silent on the western front. But in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, World War I smolders still. Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Jews, and other regional antagonists continue fighting over the last scraps of the Ottoman inheritance. As we seek to make sense of these conflicts, McMeekin's powerful exposé of Russia's aims in the First World War will illuminate our understanding of the twentieth century.

Historians have never resolved a central mystery of the Russian Revolution: How did the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and leaving nothing but economic ruin in their path, manage to stay in power through five long years of civil war? In this penetrating book, Sean McMeekin draws on previously undiscovered materials from the Soviet Ministry of Finance and other European and American archives to expose some of the darkest secrets of Russia’s early days of communism. Building on one archival revelation after another, the author reveals how the Bolsheviks financed their aggression through astonishingly extensive thievery. Their looting included everything from the cash savings of private citizens to gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, icons, antiques, and artwork. By tracking illicit Soviet financial transactions across Europe, McMeekin shows how Lenin’s regime accomplished history’s greatest heist between 1917 and 1922 and turned centuries of accumulated wealth into the sinews of class war. McMeekin also names names, introducing for the first time the compliant bankers, lawyers, and middlemen who, for a price, helped the Bolsheviks launder their loot, impoverish Russia, and impose their brutal will on millions.

A committed Communist and a tireless con-man, Lenin’s friend and the Soviet Union’s most persuasive myth-maker, Willy Münzenberg changed the course of European historyWilly Münzenberg—an Old Bolshevik who was also a self-promoting tycoon—became one of the most influential Communist operatives in Europe between the World Wars. He created a variety of front groups that recruited well-known political and cultural figures to work on behalf of the Soviet Union and its causes, and he ran an international media empire that churned out enormous amounts of propaganda and raised money for Communist concerns. Sean McMeekin tells Münzenberg’s extraordinary story, arguing persuasively that his financial chicanery and cynical propaganda efforts weakened the non-Communist left, enraged the right, and helped feed a cycle that culminated in Nazism. Drawing extensively on recently opened Moscow archives, McMeekin describes how Münzenberg parlayed his friendship with Lenin into a personal fortune and how Münzenberg’s mysterious financial manipulations outraged Social Democrats and lent rhetorical ammunition to the Nazis. His book sheds new light on Comintern finances, propaganda strategy, the use of front organizations to infiltrate non-Communist circles, and the breakdown of democracy in the Weimar Republic. It is also an engrossing tale of a Communist con man whose name once aroused fear, loathing, and admiration around the world.

鄂圖曼的終局之戰，不是第一次世界大戰的附屬品，而是直接關係現代世界秩序的形成 鄂圖曼土耳其曾經是橫跨歐亞非三大洲的帝國，到了十九、二十世紀，卻成了「歐洲病夫」。除了奧匈帝國和義大利替鄂圖曼製造不少爭端，在巴爾幹半島，俄國策動「斯拉夫人」反抗，也對鄂圖曼造成動盪，先後導致兩次巴爾幹戰爭，幾乎釀成第一次世界大戰。但鄂圖曼奇蹟似地沒有倒下。 第一次世界大戰爆發後，鄂圖曼以拖待變，在孱弱的國勢之下，仍從德國撈到不少好處，周旋許久，直到最後一刻，才加入同盟國陣營。加入大戰後，在高加索（對俄）、兩河流域（對英）的戰線，面臨重大挫敗；在達達尼爾海峽，面對英國海軍和陸軍的強攻；但鄂圖曼竟然都存活了下來。不過，轄下的亞美尼亞人，在通敵反叛的質疑中，被鄂圖曼種族清洗。 鄂圖曼如何挺過一次又一次的危機？它的存在如何維繫了某種秩序，它的瓦解又如何再造新的秩序？它自己又如何在世俗與宗教的擺盪間，完成政治體制的轉變？而原先帝國境內的諸邦如何成為新的國家，又如何持續捲入紛爭？直至今日，該區域還是持續戰火、爭端不止。 鄂圖曼的終局之戰並不是一場戰爭，而是從一九○八～一九二三年的廣泛衝突。鄂圖曼的戰場也不是第一次世界大戰的附屬活動，而是直接牽連歐戰的爆發與和平的到來。麥克米金利用了鄂圖曼、俄國和奧匈帝國等原始資料，完整且精確呈現一場涉及許多交戰國的多層次戰爭。 麥克米金還以嶄新的方式，記述現代土耳其的興起和鄂圖曼帝國其他地方遭瓜分之事，針對伴隨著帝國解體而來的強制性人口轉移、從帝國分割出伊拉克與敘利亞之類的議題，提供新的觀照視角，從而清楚呈現當今世局的來龍去脈。

鄂圖曼的終局之戰，不是第一次世界大戰的附屬品，而是直接關係現代世界秩序的形成 鄂圖曼土耳其曾經是橫跨歐亞非三大洲的帝國，到了十九、二十世紀，卻成了「歐洲病夫」。除了奧匈帝國和義大利替鄂圖曼製造不少爭端，在巴爾幹半島，俄國策動「斯拉夫人」反抗，也對鄂圖曼造成動盪，先後導致兩次巴爾幹戰爭，幾乎釀成第一次世界大戰。但鄂圖曼奇蹟似地沒有倒下。 第一次世界大戰爆發後，鄂圖曼以拖待變，在孱弱的國勢之下，仍從德國撈到不少好處，周旋許久，直到最後一刻，才加入同盟國陣營。加入大戰後，在高加索（對俄）、兩河流域（對英）的戰線，面臨重大挫敗；在達達尼爾海峽，面對英國海軍和陸軍的強攻；但鄂圖曼竟然都存活了下來。不過，轄下的亞美尼亞人，在通敵反叛的質疑中，被鄂圖曼種族清洗。 鄂圖曼如何挺過一次又一次的危機？它的存在如何維繫了某種秩序，它的瓦解又如何再造新的秩序？它自己又如何在世俗與宗教的擺盪間，完成政治體制的轉變？而原先帝國境內的諸邦如何成為新的國家，又如何持續捲入紛爭？直至今日，該區域還是持續戰火、爭端不止。 鄂圖曼的終局之戰並不是一場戰爭，而是從一九○八～一九二三年的廣泛衝突。鄂圖曼的戰場也不是第一次世界大戰的附屬活動，而是直接牽連歐戰的爆發與和平的到來。麥克米金利用了鄂圖曼、俄國和奧匈帝國等原始資料，完整且精確呈現一場涉及許多交戰國的多層次戰爭。 麥克米金還以嶄新的方式，記述現代土耳其的興起和鄂圖曼帝國其他地方遭瓜分之事，針對伴隨著帝國解體而來的強制性人口轉移、從帝國分割出伊拉克與敘利亞之類的議題，提供新的觀照視角，從而清楚呈現當今世局的來龍去脈。