Branko Milanović is an economist specialised in development and inequality. His latest book, The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World, was published November 2025.

The first Russian Revolution happened in February 1917; the second, more famous, in October, and the Civil War, caused by that revolution and the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, lasted until 1921. At first, in 1917, the Russian Army continued reluctantly fighting against the Germans and Austrians, then stopped, and Russia at Brest-Litovsk surrendered one-third of its pre-war population, one-half of industry, and 90% of coal capacity. The former Empire disintegrated into numerous independent entities, including most importantly Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia. It was a period of immense change and incredible suffering. Almost as many Russian citizens are estimated to have been killed in the Civil War (1.2 million) as during the First World War proper (1.8 million). But during the Civil War, some 5 million died from starvation and 2 million from disease. Thus the “cost” of the Civil War comes to some 8 million dead dwarfing Russian military losses in the First World War. (The data are from Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, p. 391ff). It was the “time of troubles” which in many respects resembles what we see today in the same part of the world.

The subject of a memoir written by Viktor Shklovsky, the famous Russian and Soviet art critic, the founder of the Formalist school of literary criticism, is that period: 1917 to 1922. Shklovsky was a direct participant, and witness. to the enormous destruction of the country, dislocation of peoples, and devastation of the land which followed upon the two revolutions. Politically Shklovsky was close to the SRs (Socialist Revolutionary Party, heir to the 19th century populists) and was several times interrogated by the Cheka, including most seriously in 1922, when he was arrested. This was just before a giant trial of SR leadership, accused to have politically prepared the assassinations of Bolshevik leaders, including the failed one of Lenin. The irony of fate would have Bukharin play the role of the prosecutor in the trial. Despite having the support of people like Maksim Gorky and Yakov Sverdlov, Shklovsky thought it more prudent to leave the Soviet Union, and the second part of Sentimental Journey was written in Berlin in 1922. The book was published in Russian in 1923 and in English in 1970. Shklovsky returned to the Soviet Union in the 1920s, continued working there, became internationally famous, and died in Moscow in 1984 –just before Gorbachev came to power—at the age of ninety-one.

But all of that came later. The memoir deals with the period from the February Revolution to the end of the Civil War. It is not a real memoir, since Shklovsky writes much less about himself than about others and the war; it is more of a compte-rendu of the incredible wreckage the country went through. At the time of the February Revolution Shklovsky was with the Russian Army on the Western Front. He was then moved, in a general disarray, with his unit to Persia where he witnessed not so much the war between Russia and Turkey but ethnic warfare between Persians, Kurds, Turks and Aissors (the last group Christian) all merrily slaughtering each other, burning villages and pillaging. Russian army made its own contribution to the carnage.

“We had gone to a foreign country, occupied it, added to its gloom and violence our violence, laughed at its laws, hampered its trade, refused to let it open any factories and supported the shah. And for this purpose we kept troops—kept them there even after the revolution. It was imperialism—what is more, Russian imperialism, which is to say, stupid imperialism.” (p. 78)

The amount of slaughter described by Shklovsky is incredible, far surpassing what we read in other World War I narratives by Remarque, Barbusse, Hemingway: whoever believes that there is a similarity between the wars that are being fought on land, with marauding troops, and constantly changing control of the territory, and the wars that are being fought through bombing or in trenches is terribly mistaken and should, among other things, read this book.

“The town was divided into sectors; each company pillaged its own sector. To be able to see better, they set the town on fire.” (p. 94)

“Right there by the road, under a bush lay a dead man; he lay still. Next to him the soldiers were calmly having a breakfast of Austrian canned goods, setting the cans on the corpse.” (p. 44)

“A rifle–especially a Russian one—is a treasure in the East. At the beginning of our retreat, the Persians gave two to three thousand rubles for a rifle…For the sake of comparison consider the price of the women abducted from Persia and from the Caucasus by our soldiers. In Feodosia [in Crimea], for example, a woman cost 15 rubles used and 40 rubles unused and she was yours forever.” (p. 110)

After Persia, Shklovsky went to Petrograd and Moscow and then to Kiev. (Amid all this destruction, the reader is surprised that the trains still operate more or less regularly; for sure, they do not run according to the time-table, but they nevertheless bring you from Kurdistan to Moscow in several days.) Petrograd is sullen, cold and hungry. Kiev is more lively, not the least because different armies succeed each other. At first, Russian bourgeoisie fled to Kiev,

“It was the time when the entire Russian bourgeoisie was assembled in the Ukraine, when the Ukraine was occupied by Germans; but the Germans hadn’t quite picked it clean [robbed it of food]. Three-color flags [German] were flying in the streets.” (p. 157)

But then,

“There were the following forces in the Ukraine. In Kiev, Skoropadsky {Ukrainian hetman brought as a puppet government by Germans], supported by the Russian officers. They didn’t know themselves why they were supporting him, but that’s what Henaud [French diplomat] has ordered. All around Kiev was Petlyura, with an entire army.” (p. 158)

How was the war fought in Kherson? When the Whites controlled it: “The list of those who had been shot hung on the walls. Fifteen men a day. Very regular. And the last five were always Jewish names—to show that there was no discrimination.” (p. 208). Or when Ukrainians nationalists were in charge: “[Ukrainians] generally shot Bolsheviks as Russians and Russians as Bolsheviks”. (p. 159)

After “working” for the SRs in the Ukraine, Shklovsky returns to Petrograd where he is, thanks to his literary connections, housed in an artist colony—even as his conspiratorial work on behalf of SR (which is never explained but only hinted) continues.

“The classrooms were not heated. The life of the unit was concentrated on the commissary. A pound of bread was issued every day, as well as herring, several grams of rye and a piece of sugar. When you got home, it was terrible to look at these puny portions. As if you were being mocked.” (p. 180)

“A friend of mine burned his library. That was horrible work. You have to tear all the pages out of the books and wad them up.” (p 235). (The sentence illustrates perfectly the dry, detached, almost cold style with which the memoir is written.)

“Part of this [artists’] building had once been occupied by the Central Bank. I got hold of the key to the bank, walked in, and my head started swimming. Rooms, rooms, and more rooms on the side facing Nevsky prospect, rooms facing Morskaya Street, still more rooms facing the Moika canal. Open safes, the whole floor littered with papers, receipts books. manila folders. With the folders alone, I kept my stove going nearly a year.” (p 235)

How did Bolsheviks organize the economy?

“They wanted to organize everything so that the sun would rise on schedule and the weather would be made in their chancellery.” (p. 189)

“You heard such incredible stories! Milk is being collected: the order says to take all the milk to such-and-such place by such-and-such day. But there aren’t any containers. so it is poured on the ground.” (p. 181)

The style is self-contained, almost naïve. The sentences are short, telegraph-like, written with sang-froid. Although the book is broadly-speaking chronological, the links between various events are not explained nor discussed. We do not know, once the army disintegrates, why Shklovsky moves from one city to another. It reminds me of the “cinema-verité” of another Russian artist of that time, Dziga Vertov: the same aimless trams running through deserted streets of Petrograd, stores closed, boarded, hunger omni-present.

The relevance of books like Shklovsky’s is not only historical, even if that part is important too. Many famous people make cameo appearances in the book: Kerensky, Gorky, Nikolai Sukhanov (the chronicler of the Revolution), the early Cheka, and towards the end Mandelstam (“He writes his poems with people around and reads them line by line, day by day”), Anna Akhmatova, Gumilyov (“He was alien to me and it is hard for me to write about him. There was no need to kill him”), Blok (“He died harder than Gumilyov: he died of despair”).

But the memoir, read today, brings the thoughts of repetition of history. In many cases the problems of today are nearly identical to the problems of one-hundred years ago. Nothing has been solved. The question then becomes: at what point in history do certain problems go away? When does history of something end? For it surely—for some issues—does end. Nobody is fighting for Caesar vs. Pompey today. But for other issues like the Middle East some of the actors are slightly different, but the war goes on. The same question can be asked today for the part of Eurasia that Shklovsky’s book describes.

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NB. The book is published (Dalkey Archive Press,1970) with two excellent introductions: literary (by Richard Sheldon) and historical (by Sidney Monas).