As this series of articles commemorating the Russian Revolution draws to its close, we should consider the single most compelling account of that moment. Written by one of its leading participants, Leon Trotsky’s The History of the Russian Revolution was completed in 1930, with Trotsky recently exiled from Russia and living in Turkey.

Despite its length — the 1977 edition from which I quote runs to nearly 1,300 pages — the work is tightly focused on the months between February and October 1917. With the exception of six initial chapters that explain the book’s theoretical framework and historical context and six appendices challenging Stalinist claims, each volume deals with only a matter of months. Volume one runs from February to June, volume two from July to September, and volume three spans October itself, concluding in the immediate aftermath of the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power.

No other historical work on the subject has involved this level of detail. Unsurprisingly, volume one immediately faced criticism for its “prolixity,” to which Trotsky responded in the “Introduction to Volumes Two and Three”: