THE POTEMKIN MUTINY

by Richard Hough ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

It began with maggots in the shipboard meat supply. A few days later it had become the most famous naval mutiny of the Twentieth Century. This is the story of the 1905 mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea---the same story immortalized in the great Eisenstein propaganda film---and it is told in a way which attempts valiantly to be objective. But one wonders whether the true details, if not the spirit, of the Potemkin story will ever be disclosed. For here is the bitterest kind of situation, the kind which brought the main Revolution to a head scant years later. Here are the Red heroes---Malushenko--the ""oppressors""---Captain Eugene Golikov---and here too is the terrible suppression of demonstrations by the Cossacks in the near-by port of Odessa. The author's facts in the main seem accurate. His descriptive and narrative powers are good. But his greatest virtue is that he lets us see the protagonists not as ""symbols"" of one side or another, but as harassed human beings reacting under powerful tensions. As such, the book is an important contribution both to history, and to sea literature.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1961

Categories: NONFICTION