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Available
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Publication
London : Phoenix, 2004.
Description
One of the great works of modern historical writing, the classic account of the ideas, people, and politics that led to the Bolshevik Revolution Edmund Wilson's "To the Finland Station "is intellectual history on a grand scale, full of romance, idealism, intrigue, and conspiracy, that traces the revolutionary ideas that shaped the modern world from the French Revolution up through Lenin's arrival at Finland Station in St. Petersburg in 1917. Fueled by Wilson's own passionate engagement with the ideas and politics at play, it is a lively and vivid, sweeping account of a singular idea--that it is possible to construct a society based on justice, equality, and freedom--gaining the power to change history. Vico, Michelet, Bakunin, and especially Marx--along with scores of other anarchists, socialists, nihilists, utopians, and more--all come to life in these pages. And in Wilson's telling, their stories and their ideas remain as alive, as provocative, as relevant now as they were in their own time.… (more)
Media reviews
The Spectator
The originality of To the Finland Station lies not in its direct narrative or in its factuality but in its study of the writing and acting of history. The task Wilson sets himself is to follow the devious yet constantly renewed threads in the texture of conspiracy. His people and their actions are
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born when their minds make their act of discovery... When Wilson moves on to Renan, Taine, France and, briefly, to the Symbolists in order to show the ossification of the once Romantic impulse, the biographical detail links their thinking to their lives. And biography plays a major part as his grand examination of Babeuf, Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Lassalle, Lenin and Trotsky expands. It is amusingly typical of Wilson that he should turn to one of Meredith’s novels for an oblique glance at Lassalle...
To the Finland Station is perhaps the only book on the grand scale to come out of the Thirties - in either England or America. It contains to a novel degree the human history of an argument, from its roots to its innumerable branches, domestic and emotional... It is because it never loses sight of the pain gnawing at the heart of the human conscience that Wilson’s discursive record, untouched by rhetoric, achieves pages one can only call noble. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member tomcatMurr
Dated and overrated. The most interesting sections are those on Michelet, Babeuf and Robert Owen. Wilson's discussion of Das Kapital is also perceptive, but the book is ultimately marred by his sycophantic attitude towards Lenin.
His main source for his account of Lenin is the myth-making,
But the most damaging weakness of the second half of the book is his complete omission of any discussion of Chernyshevsky. Chernyshevsky's book What is to be Done? exercised a huge influence on Lenin's generation -Lenin even borrowed the title for one of his own tracts in tribute. Nechayev's Catechism of a Revolutionary, which did much to influence the character of the Russian Marxists, was also heavily influenced by Chernyshevsky. Any discussion of Russian Marxism without a mention of Chernyshevsky is necessarily fundamentally flawed. He also underestimates and downplays the role played by Plekhanov.
If it is true, as the blurb claims, that Wilson was the pre-eminent American man of letters of the twentieth century, one can only say oh dear, and role ones eyes. This is my first book by Wilson, and on this showing, it will also be my last. Good title, though.
His main source for his account of Lenin is the myth-making,
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hagiographic memoir produced by Krupskaya, which Wilson takes at face value, insisting, like Krupskaya, that Lenin never flew into rages (his rages were nuclear, incandescent, and lasted years), that he always showed human concern for his comrades (she would say that, wouldn't she) and that on his deathbed he asked about Martov (Lenin had had a massive stroke and was practically speechless for the last 10 months of his life). It may be true as Wilson says in his introduction, that at the time of writing there were no other sources available on Lenin's life, but he still should have evaluated this source a bit more thoroughly. Wilson suffers from that most American of conditions: excessive gullibility.But the most damaging weakness of the second half of the book is his complete omission of any discussion of Chernyshevsky. Chernyshevsky's book What is to be Done? exercised a huge influence on Lenin's generation -Lenin even borrowed the title for one of his own tracts in tribute. Nechayev's Catechism of a Revolutionary, which did much to influence the character of the Russian Marxists, was also heavily influenced by Chernyshevsky. Any discussion of Russian Marxism without a mention of Chernyshevsky is necessarily fundamentally flawed. He also underestimates and downplays the role played by Plekhanov.
If it is true, as the blurb claims, that Wilson was the pre-eminent American man of letters of the twentieth century, one can only say oh dear, and role ones eyes. This is my first book by Wilson, and on this showing, it will also be my last. Good title, though.
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
First, let's be clear about which edition we are looking at; I was reading the British Penguin edition, published in 1991. This was a UK edition of the 1972 US edition, for which Wilson wrote a new introduction; much of the text was written in 1940, and the later chapters make this quite clear -
The approach Wilson takes is interesting; the book starts off as a work of literary criticism, looking at nineteenth-century French historians reacting to the French Revolution. As we progress in time, the historians comment less and less on historical events and begin to relate their writings to their actions and the contemporary political scene. By the time we reach Marx and Engels, we are looking at fully-fledged activists. The work is then brought to its conclusion with Trotsky and Lenin, ending with Lenin arriving at the Finland Station in Petrograd at the eve of the October revolution.
I particularly liked the description of the events of Lenin's return to Petrograd; it had a very vivid sense of someone walking into a situation that they were not expecting (Lenin was half expecting to be arrested) and then running with the situation as they found it, and of events taking their own momentum and running away from people who thought they were in control. How much of that is the Soviet accepted history, how much is fact and how much Wilson's own imagination I cannot say, but it makes quite interesting, even exciting reading!
The strengths of this book are in the pre-history of European socialism, and in the pen portraits of the earlier players. Marx and Engels in particular are sympathetically portrayed, even whilst their faults are not glossed over (at least, as much as you'd expect a non-revisionist work to be). The accounts of Trotsky's and Lenin's early lives are also interesting, though I gather that they were compiled from mainly Soviet sources, so it must be expected that they will reflect the Party line (although, of course, by the time of writing, Trotsky was officially an 'unperson', so the line there would be the one from the early Bolshevik era). The accounts of the political manoeuvering in the years leading up to 1917 is helpful in giving an overview, though it feels a little journalistic and sketchy in places. Certainly, Lenin's years in exile are dealt with in very short order. And the book only mentions Stalin and his purges in passing; I had the feeling that Wilson was treating them as a given, but specifically did not want to talk about them. In a way, this is understandable; Stalin and the direction he took the Soviet Union has very little to do with revolution, but it was the end result of the process that started with Marx and Engels, and no historian today would get away with not mentioning it.
There are omissions: others have commented that the portrait of Lenin is excessively kind, having again been assembled from Soviet sources; and Wilson at one point acknowledges gaps in the record caused by Soviet editing of Marx's correspondence, and but a few paragraphs later excuses this as an act of socialist zeal, enthusiasm and loyalty. And as I hinted above, he spends a chapter trying to explain the concept of the Dialectic and just succeeds in muddying the waters further. (I certainly emerged from that chapter little wiser than when I went in.) He also expounds on the Labour theory of value, and whilst he has more success with that, he does seem to spend more time explaining what other people thought of it than examining it himself.
For a Lenin apologist, he is not uncritical of some of the tenets of socialist thought. He does expose flaws in the concept of the Labour theory of value, and has a very good analysis of why there was no socialist revolution in Britain (the ruling class made concessions and the managerial class negotiated with the trade unions, who were more interested in securing advantages for their members than pursuing revolution) or America (there was no ruling class to revolt against). And his explanation of Lenin's anti-democratic statements - that there is no place for democracy in a revolutionary movement, because once you stop to debate issues and subject them to democratic processes, you lose the ability to plan in secret and to act decisively - makes everything fall into place. That. ultimately, has to lead to the realisation that if you once seize power by force, you can only retain it by force - but Wilson lacked the historical perspective we have nowadays to realise this.
So: a useful book, but it should certainly not be your only source in revolutionary history. And it should serve as a warning. Wilson's analysis of why there was a revolution in Russia and not in Britain or America needs to be heeded; when political leaders start to act as though they possess absolute power, and when the employers and owners of capital are not prepared to negotiate, or consider the opinions of those who work for them, but consider that they have all the rights and the workers have none, then we are seeing the growth of conditions for revolution, the same sort of conditions that there were in Tsarist Russia. All that the situation lacks is a sufficiently dedicated band of revolutionary leaders; and perhaps it is good that we do not have such people, because such people can make dreadful things happen in the name of their revolution.
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especially where Trotsky is referred to in the present tense. This would almost certainly confuse the less careful reader (if they made it past the chapter on the Dialectic...)The approach Wilson takes is interesting; the book starts off as a work of literary criticism, looking at nineteenth-century French historians reacting to the French Revolution. As we progress in time, the historians comment less and less on historical events and begin to relate their writings to their actions and the contemporary political scene. By the time we reach Marx and Engels, we are looking at fully-fledged activists. The work is then brought to its conclusion with Trotsky and Lenin, ending with Lenin arriving at the Finland Station in Petrograd at the eve of the October revolution.
I particularly liked the description of the events of Lenin's return to Petrograd; it had a very vivid sense of someone walking into a situation that they were not expecting (Lenin was half expecting to be arrested) and then running with the situation as they found it, and of events taking their own momentum and running away from people who thought they were in control. How much of that is the Soviet accepted history, how much is fact and how much Wilson's own imagination I cannot say, but it makes quite interesting, even exciting reading!
The strengths of this book are in the pre-history of European socialism, and in the pen portraits of the earlier players. Marx and Engels in particular are sympathetically portrayed, even whilst their faults are not glossed over (at least, as much as you'd expect a non-revisionist work to be). The accounts of Trotsky's and Lenin's early lives are also interesting, though I gather that they were compiled from mainly Soviet sources, so it must be expected that they will reflect the Party line (although, of course, by the time of writing, Trotsky was officially an 'unperson', so the line there would be the one from the early Bolshevik era). The accounts of the political manoeuvering in the years leading up to 1917 is helpful in giving an overview, though it feels a little journalistic and sketchy in places. Certainly, Lenin's years in exile are dealt with in very short order. And the book only mentions Stalin and his purges in passing; I had the feeling that Wilson was treating them as a given, but specifically did not want to talk about them. In a way, this is understandable; Stalin and the direction he took the Soviet Union has very little to do with revolution, but it was the end result of the process that started with Marx and Engels, and no historian today would get away with not mentioning it.
There are omissions: others have commented that the portrait of Lenin is excessively kind, having again been assembled from Soviet sources; and Wilson at one point acknowledges gaps in the record caused by Soviet editing of Marx's correspondence, and but a few paragraphs later excuses this as an act of socialist zeal, enthusiasm and loyalty. And as I hinted above, he spends a chapter trying to explain the concept of the Dialectic and just succeeds in muddying the waters further. (I certainly emerged from that chapter little wiser than when I went in.) He also expounds on the Labour theory of value, and whilst he has more success with that, he does seem to spend more time explaining what other people thought of it than examining it himself.
For a Lenin apologist, he is not uncritical of some of the tenets of socialist thought. He does expose flaws in the concept of the Labour theory of value, and has a very good analysis of why there was no socialist revolution in Britain (the ruling class made concessions and the managerial class negotiated with the trade unions, who were more interested in securing advantages for their members than pursuing revolution) or America (there was no ruling class to revolt against). And his explanation of Lenin's anti-democratic statements - that there is no place for democracy in a revolutionary movement, because once you stop to debate issues and subject them to democratic processes, you lose the ability to plan in secret and to act decisively - makes everything fall into place. That. ultimately, has to lead to the realisation that if you once seize power by force, you can only retain it by force - but Wilson lacked the historical perspective we have nowadays to realise this.
So: a useful book, but it should certainly not be your only source in revolutionary history. And it should serve as a warning. Wilson's analysis of why there was a revolution in Russia and not in Britain or America needs to be heeded; when political leaders start to act as though they possess absolute power, and when the employers and owners of capital are not prepared to negotiate, or consider the opinions of those who work for them, but consider that they have all the rights and the workers have none, then we are seeing the growth of conditions for revolution, the same sort of conditions that there were in Tsarist Russia. All that the situation lacks is a sufficiently dedicated band of revolutionary leaders; and perhaps it is good that we do not have such people, because such people can make dreadful things happen in the name of their revolution.
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LibraryThing member McCaine
The American critical writer Edmund Wilson attempted in this book to give an overview of the historical development of socialism, or rather the many socialisms, until the 1930s. However, the result is a very mixed bag: sometimes Wilson reaches great heights, but sometimes it is bare nonsense too.
The best description I can give of the nature of the work is that it is very much a literary overview of socialism rather than a political-historical one. Wilson concentrates in all mini-biographies of early socialists as well as the pieces on Lenin, Marx & Engels on the particulars of their life. Larded with many details and amusing anecdotes revealing the personality of the main socialist leaders, this book is very much at its best when describing the human interactions between various socialists and the world around them, and in portraying how their ideas were formed by their life experiences.
The big downside to this book is, however, Wilson's complete lack of understanding of any theory whatever. He clearly has neither knowledge of nor interest in any of the real tenets of socialism, Marxist, Lassallean or otherwise, and has not taken any trouble to look it up either. The result is that the passages which mean to give quick overviews of the Marxist or Leninist positions on certain issues are almost invariably simplistic, confused and wrong. The worst example of this (as a prior reviewer also mentioned) is the chapter on the dialectic, which immediately reveals to the reader that Wilson didn't have the slightest idea what dialectics is, and the childish simplicity of his view on it makes one think he probably got his information from a dictionary or something equally useless.
For these reasons, it is hard to say whether the overall result is positive or negative. If you are looking for a good insight on the development of the theoretical aspects of socialism or the political issues of those times, absolutely do not rely on this book. If you are however interested in the personalities and life histories of the main socialists until WWII, then Wilson's book will be a high-quality, pleasant and sympathetic guide. If there were a 3.5 star rating, I would give it that; but I will err on the side of a positive review here since I suppose most people reading popular literature about socialism are not going to be interested in the the technical details of the theory, unless they are socialists themselves - in which case they should read Marx & Engels directly anyway.
One final word of warning: the introduction by Louis Menand is terrible, and is best skipped altogether.
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The best description I can give of the nature of the work is that it is very much a literary overview of socialism rather than a political-historical one. Wilson concentrates in all mini-biographies of early socialists as well as the pieces on Lenin, Marx & Engels on the particulars of their life. Larded with many details and amusing anecdotes revealing the personality of the main socialist leaders, this book is very much at its best when describing the human interactions between various socialists and the world around them, and in portraying how their ideas were formed by their life experiences.
The big downside to this book is, however, Wilson's complete lack of understanding of any theory whatever. He clearly has neither knowledge of nor interest in any of the real tenets of socialism, Marxist, Lassallean or otherwise, and has not taken any trouble to look it up either. The result is that the passages which mean to give quick overviews of the Marxist or Leninist positions on certain issues are almost invariably simplistic, confused and wrong. The worst example of this (as a prior reviewer also mentioned) is the chapter on the dialectic, which immediately reveals to the reader that Wilson didn't have the slightest idea what dialectics is, and the childish simplicity of his view on it makes one think he probably got his information from a dictionary or something equally useless.
For these reasons, it is hard to say whether the overall result is positive or negative. If you are looking for a good insight on the development of the theoretical aspects of socialism or the political issues of those times, absolutely do not rely on this book. If you are however interested in the personalities and life histories of the main socialists until WWII, then Wilson's book will be a high-quality, pleasant and sympathetic guide. If there were a 3.5 star rating, I would give it that; but I will err on the side of a positive review here since I suppose most people reading popular literature about socialism are not going to be interested in the the technical details of the theory, unless they are socialists themselves - in which case they should read Marx & Engels directly anyway.
One final word of warning: the introduction by Louis Menand is terrible, and is best skipped altogether.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
An interesting but flawed history of the intellectual and historical origins of socialism. Wilson makes the interesting decision to frame the ideas through the lives and biographies of their earliest practitioners.
The most interesting chapters are those in the very beginning, where Wilson
After him, we have Renan, who was among the foremost rationalist critics of Christianity and nationalism, then Taine, one of the first 'scientific' analysts of history, then the novelist Anatole France, who poked fun at the Church with a story about the baptism of penguins, and the Revolution with The Gods Are Athirst.
The origins of Socialism itself come from the French Revolutionary Babeuf, a sort of anarcho-communist, and Saint-Simon, a founder of a sort of technocratic sect, and his follower, Enfantin, who was among the first to theorize 'free love', some 130 years before the American counterculture. There are also brief sketches of American experiments, including Robert Owen, and the planned Oneida Community.
The bulk of the book, some two hundred pages, is devoted to the dual biographies of Marx and Engels, and some brief sketches of their theory. The biographical portions are superb, the theoretical analysis devoted to one or two lonely chapters. We see, briefly, 1848, the Paris Commune, the fiery Nechayev, and the Anarchists: Bakunin, Proudhon and Kropotkin. Wilson does recognize the chief tenets of Marxist thought as the Labor Theory of Value and Dialectical Materialism, and does fairly question them both.
The last chapters of the book are the most disappointing. The chapter on Lenin seems to be based almost wholly on early Soviet propaganda, and the Trotsky chapter is charming in its naive praise for him, solely arising from the fact that he is not Stalin. Although Wilson at least recognizes these mistakes in judgment in a tacked-on endnote.
What happens after this? What is the fate of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat? Trotsky's early judgment of the Soviet Union as a 'deformed bureaucratic state' seems to endure, and what undercurrents seem to best survive (again based on my very limited experience) are democratic socialism, anti-plutocracy, anti-globaliztion, anti-'scientific management', and the offspring of some Maoist 'Third-Worldism' socialism, which (justly) protests the abusive treatment of the Global South by the richer nations.
Although Wilson's overly high estimation of the fate of the revolution is misplaced, his most correct assertion on socialism may be this:
"Socialism by itself can create neither a political discipline nor a culture [...] Only the organic processes of society can make it possible to arrive at either. And it seems today as if only the man who has already enjoyed a good standard of living and become accustomed to a certain security will really fight for security and comfort. But then, it appears, on the other hand, that from the moment he has acquired these things, he is transformed into something quite other than Karl Marx's idea of a proletarian.
Marx could recognize as worthy of survival only those who had been unjustly degraded and those who rose naturally superior through intellect and moral authority. He had no key for appreciating the realities of a society in which men are really to some degree at liberty to make friends with one another indiscriminately or indiscriminately to bawl one another out - in other words, in which there is any actual approximation to that ideal of a classless society which it was the whole aim of his life to preach. And we must remember - unless we are willing to accept it as a simple act of faith in Scripture, as the people of the year 1000 expected the world to come to an end - that Karl Marx's catastrophic prophecy of the upshot of capitalist development, the big short circuit between the classes, is based primarily on psychological assumptions, which may or may not turn out to have been justified: the assumption that there can be no possible limit to the extent to which the people who live on profits will continue to remain unaware of or indifferent to the privations of the people who provide them. The Armageddon that Karl Marx tended to expect presupposed a situation which the employer and the employee were unable to make any contact whatever. [...]
In other words, Marx was incapable of imagining democracy at all."
But once again, we are seeing economic stratification, even in our democracies - or at least in the American education, health care system, living habits, taxation system. Neo-liberalism and financial conservatism have seen to that. Perhaps the Prophet staggers out of his grave once again.
The most interesting chapters are those in the very beginning, where Wilson
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recognizes the importance of the historical cycles of Giambattista Vico, and then traces them through the historians of the French Enlightenment, Michelet, who defined the Renaissance.After him, we have Renan, who was among the foremost rationalist critics of Christianity and nationalism, then Taine, one of the first 'scientific' analysts of history, then the novelist Anatole France, who poked fun at the Church with a story about the baptism of penguins, and the Revolution with The Gods Are Athirst.
The origins of Socialism itself come from the French Revolutionary Babeuf, a sort of anarcho-communist, and Saint-Simon, a founder of a sort of technocratic sect, and his follower, Enfantin, who was among the first to theorize 'free love', some 130 years before the American counterculture. There are also brief sketches of American experiments, including Robert Owen, and the planned Oneida Community.
The bulk of the book, some two hundred pages, is devoted to the dual biographies of Marx and Engels, and some brief sketches of their theory. The biographical portions are superb, the theoretical analysis devoted to one or two lonely chapters. We see, briefly, 1848, the Paris Commune, the fiery Nechayev, and the Anarchists: Bakunin, Proudhon and Kropotkin. Wilson does recognize the chief tenets of Marxist thought as the Labor Theory of Value and Dialectical Materialism, and does fairly question them both.
The last chapters of the book are the most disappointing. The chapter on Lenin seems to be based almost wholly on early Soviet propaganda, and the Trotsky chapter is charming in its naive praise for him, solely arising from the fact that he is not Stalin. Although Wilson at least recognizes these mistakes in judgment in a tacked-on endnote.
What happens after this? What is the fate of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat? Trotsky's early judgment of the Soviet Union as a 'deformed bureaucratic state' seems to endure, and what undercurrents seem to best survive (again based on my very limited experience) are democratic socialism, anti-plutocracy, anti-globaliztion, anti-'scientific management', and the offspring of some Maoist 'Third-Worldism' socialism, which (justly) protests the abusive treatment of the Global South by the richer nations.
Although Wilson's overly high estimation of the fate of the revolution is misplaced, his most correct assertion on socialism may be this:
"Socialism by itself can create neither a political discipline nor a culture [...] Only the organic processes of society can make it possible to arrive at either. And it seems today as if only the man who has already enjoyed a good standard of living and become accustomed to a certain security will really fight for security and comfort. But then, it appears, on the other hand, that from the moment he has acquired these things, he is transformed into something quite other than Karl Marx's idea of a proletarian.
Marx could recognize as worthy of survival only those who had been unjustly degraded and those who rose naturally superior through intellect and moral authority. He had no key for appreciating the realities of a society in which men are really to some degree at liberty to make friends with one another indiscriminately or indiscriminately to bawl one another out - in other words, in which there is any actual approximation to that ideal of a classless society which it was the whole aim of his life to preach. And we must remember - unless we are willing to accept it as a simple act of faith in Scripture, as the people of the year 1000 expected the world to come to an end - that Karl Marx's catastrophic prophecy of the upshot of capitalist development, the big short circuit between the classes, is based primarily on psychological assumptions, which may or may not turn out to have been justified: the assumption that there can be no possible limit to the extent to which the people who live on profits will continue to remain unaware of or indifferent to the privations of the people who provide them. The Armageddon that Karl Marx tended to expect presupposed a situation which the employer and the employee were unable to make any contact whatever. [...]
In other words, Marx was incapable of imagining democracy at all."
But once again, we are seeing economic stratification, even in our democracies - or at least in the American education, health care system, living habits, taxation system. Neo-liberalism and financial conservatism have seen to that. Perhaps the Prophet staggers out of his grave once again.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mwirkk
Generally, I can't stand Edmund Wilson when he's wearing his 'critics hat', but I can tolerate him enough for the sake of his scholarship, such as it is here. Worth your time to read.
LibraryThing member AsYouKnow_Bob
Terrific stuff: everything intellectual history should be.
LibraryThing member Schmerguls
1084 To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, by Edmund Wilson (read 6 Oct 1970) This is an account of Communism up to Apr 16, 1917, when Lenin arrived at Petrograd. I don't quite know what to make of it. It is more favorable to Marxism than I am, but it is well-written
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and probably quite objective. It discusses a lot I am not familiar with, especially in the earlier part of the book. For instance, some time is spent on Jules Michelet, who was born in 1798 and wrote a history of France. I'd like to read it--I wonder if there is a good English translation. The account of Marx seems familiar because I had an excellent teacher in college : Father William Green. The accounts of Lasalle (born Apr 11, 1825, in Breslau, died in a duel) and Bakunin (born 18 May 1814 in Russia, died 1 July 1876) were well-written and interesting. I have long wanted to read this book and it has been time well-spent. Show Less
LibraryThing member JBreedlove
A heavy book loaded with the philosophical and historical under pinnings of socialsim and communism. Social conditions beget ideas, ideas beget actions which beget social conditions. . .
LibraryThing member ostrom
I finally got to visit St. Petersburg in 1994 and walk across the bridge . . . to the Finland Station! There wasn't much going on. I'd missed the revolution by 70-80 years or so. Oh, well.
LibraryThing member tzelman
Clear explanation of historical thought from Michelet, Renan, to Marx, Engels, Lenin
LibraryThing member jddunn
A wide-ranging story of the development of the Socialist/Communist movement in 19th Century Europe, from the post French Revolution roots up to Lenin’s arrival in St. Petersburg(at the Finland Station) to lead the Bolsheviks in 1917.
LibraryThing member Fledgist
This is one of the most thorough historical studies of Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and its place in historical theory ever written by a major literary scholar. Wilson's critique of the left is dated today (after all he doesn't look at race or gender nor, to be fair should we expect him to do do so)
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but it is, for a writer of his time and his limitations excellent. This is a work to read, reread, and savour. His closing satire is still funny, and still to the point. Show Less
LibraryThing member kcshankd
History of the rise of socialism, from the French Revolution to the dawning of the Russian Revolution. All the standard caveats apply, and by the end of his writing the work Wilson knew the reality of the Soviet Union, but this is a worthwhile effort. The earlier chapters especially stand out. A
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historical work, not a political one. Show Less
LibraryThing member ffortsa
We almost always read fiction in what I call our 'uptown' reading group, but this time we tackled [To the Finland Station]. Very interesting discussion followed, to my surprise and pleasure. Edmund Wilson writes marvelously clear prose, even if it's in an older, more subordinate-clause style. While
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his section on Lenin is too much a hagiography (as he himself admitted later), the history of socialist and communist origins and philosophy in Europe really filled a hole in my education, and his concentration on the history and personalities of Marx and Engels made them very vivid to me. If you haven't read it, take a look, and forgive the first chapter or so on the French philosophers (it is rather deadly). Show Less