Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin - Hardcover

Bascomb, Neal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618592067 ISBN 13: 9780618592067

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007

Synopsis

The true story of the deadliest naval mutiny in history

In 1905, after being served rancid meat, more than seven hundred Russian sailors mutinied against their officers aboard what was then one of the most powerful battleships in the world. Theirs was a life barely worth living -- a life of hard labor and bitter oppression, an existence, in its hopelessness and injustice, not unlike that of most of the working class in Russia at the time. Certainly their rebellion came as no surprise. Still, against any reasonable odds of success, the sailors-turned-revolutionaries, led by the charismatic firebrand Matyushenko, risked their lives to take control of the ship and fly the red flag of revolution. What followed was a violent port-to-port chase that spanned eleven harrowing days and came to symbolize the Russian revolution itself.

A pulse-quickening story that alternates between the opulent court of Nicholas II and the razor's-edge tension aboard the Potemkin, Red Mutiny is a tale threaded with terrific adventure, epic naval battles, heroic sacrifices, treachery, bloodlust, and a rallying cry of freedom that would steer the course of the twentieth century. It is also a fine work of scholarship that draws for the first time on the Soviet archives to shed new light on this seminal event in Russian and naval history.

For readers of Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October and Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, Neal Bascomb's gripping adventure at sea is the story of courage, the power of ideas, and the fragile nature of alliance.

About this title

About the Author

NEAL BASCOMB is the author of the national bestseller The Perfect Mile, the critically acclaimed Higher, and the award-winning Red Mutiny. A former editor and international journalist, he has also contributed to the New York Times. For Hunting Eichmann, Bascomb tracked down former Nazi soldiers and right-wing radicals in Buenos Aires, traveled to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to meet with legendary Mossad operatives, uncovered an old memoir by Eichmann on his escape from Germany, and interviewed members of the El Al flight crew involved in Eichmann's transport to Israel, a story that has never been told. He also made numerous archival discoveries, most notably unearthing the passport that Eichmann used to escape Europe, a discovery that made international headlines.

From Booklist

The Potemkin has been the subject of many movies, but only one English-language history of the mutinous Russian battleship exists--The Potemkin Mutiny, by Richard Hough (1960), which did not access Russian naval archives, according to Bascomb. Thus opens a research-and-narration opportunity on which this author completely capitalizes. Presenting a restrained degree of context to the 1905 Revolution, plus brief biographical sketches of the sailors and officers involved in the mutiny, Bascomb swiftly activates the drama of the uprising. Intended by its instigators to ignite a takeover across Russia's Black Sea fleet, followed by socialist revolution, the mutiny actually erupted spontaneously. That forced a "what now" impetus on the incident's ensuing dynamic. Eventually, the Potemkin gave up in Romania, its surviving crew dispersing to write memoirs that Bascomb seamlessly synthesizes with the stories of the Potemkin's pursuers. Neither pro-red nor pro-white, Bascomb is pro-objectivity in this original rendering of the renowned revolt. Gilbert Taylor
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About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0618592067
• ISBN 13: 9780618592067
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 386