"An even more impressive and important work than the author's classic study of revolutionary 1917, The Bolsheviks Come to Power. In this book, Rabinowitch has culled an astonishing amount of new information from long closed archives and crafted it into a compelling narrative accessible to specialists and general readers alike. From it emerges a nearly unknown history of people, events, and processes, including the birth of the Soviet political order, that were fateful for Russia and indeed for the world." Stephen F. Cohen, author of Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia"Alexander Rabinowitch is the author of the outstanding The Bolsheviks Come to Power. In this follow up volume, The Bolsheviks in Power, Rabinowitch looks at the first year of Soviet power in Petrograd. [here] there is much to challenge the stereotype presented of the Russian Revolution, one which a new generation of anti-capitalists are increasingly questioning."--Socialist Review October 2007"The author of the most important academic study of the 1917 Russian Revolution has now written the most serious archival study of the early revolutionary regime .

[The Bolsheviks in Power] is a book that deserves to be studied and not merely read." --Kevin Murphy, International Socialist Review, January-February 2008"Without slighting ideology or Lenin's importance, and with one eye always on international events, Rabinowitch uses painstaking research in archival and other contemporary sources to root Bolshevik authoritarianism in the often mundane realities of the struggle for the survival of Soviet power . Like [his] previous volumes, The Bolsheviks in Power will certainly be mandatory reading for any student or scholar of modern Russian history." --Michael Hickey, Slavonica, November 2009"This masterful volume . fills a gaping hole in the historiography of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union . [How] the party's relatively open, decentralized, and democratic structure . [was] transformed into 'the highly centralized, ultra-authoritarian Bolshevik political system' of Soviet Russia . The details behind [Rabinowitch's] conclusive answer make up this rich, detailed, fascinating book.

" --Rex A. Wade, American Historical Review.