One of those stories many an amateur historian thinks they know without actually knowing much. Bascomb manages an exceptionally engaging style throughout this well researched book. ( )

A well written and detailed book covering the entire episode of the actually mutant and how it affected all Russia and how the Russian affected the mutiny ( )

Disappointing. All I knew about the Potemkin comes from the movie, and stray references here and there, so I was pleased to find in a remainder list. Alas, it’s another history-by-a-journalist, with the flaws of that genre: overreliance on personal narrative, and the idea that the writer ought to be an advocate for a position. In this case there’s the additional problem of author Neal Bascomb seems to be writing a nonfiction novel – going way beyond the sources to present a case. (Well, I don’t know for sure, not having access to original sources myself. But I’m dubious that they document mutiny leader Afansy Matyushenko’s bad dreams, for example). Bascomb’s bibliography does list a lot of primary sources; unfortunately many of them are from the Soviet era. Bascomb is clearly on the side of the mutineers as poor oppressed subjects of cruel autocracy, although he never really makes a case for the Russian government as particularly cruel – grossly incompetent, yes.


To be sure, there’s a lot of interesting stuff. The movie makes it seem like the mutiny was a spontaneous response to rotten meat in the enlisted mess borscht; in fact, the sailors had been planning a mutiny for some time (including stockpiling weapons and ammunition) and had agreed that they would seize on some incident and use it as a pretext; the inner circle of revolutionaries had agreed that the borscht would be an adequate cause long before it was actually served. The root causes were overall poor treatment and fears that they would be sent to the Far East to fight the Japanese. I hadn’t realized that a second ship, the torpedo boat Ismail, joined the mutiny (not having much choice, since it was under Potemkin’s guns). The movie also makes it seem like the uprising in Odessa was the result of the mutiny; in fact Odessa was in turmoil before the Potemkin arrived in the harbor. In the film, it’s sailor Grigory Vakulenchuk who’s the prime mutineer; in fact, he and Matyushenko were co-organizers; Matyushenko took over after Vakulenchuk was killed and was the de facto captain of Potemkin afterward. (Matyushenko gets little acknowledgement in Soviet era hagiography, since he was a Social Democrat).


The Odessa Steps incident was real; the shelling of the city afterward was perfunctory and only used the Potemkin’s secondary battery. The signalman put in charge of gunnery was not sympathetic to the mutiny and (according to Bascomb) deliberately misaimed the guns. The supposed target was a theater where the military command was meeting; they quickly decamped when they realized they were under fire and the revolutionaries in the city asked the Potemkin to cease fire because the bombardment was doing more harm than good. The triumphant passage through the Black Sea Squadron, with the other ships refusing to fire on the Potemkin, was also real; in fact, the Potemkin sailed through the squadron, then turned around and sailed through it again. On the second pass (not show in the film), the battleship Saint George broke out of line as the crew mutinied, forced the officers into a launch, and joined the Potemkin.


That set the stage for the great anticlimax. The revolutionaries now had two battleships, a torpedo boat, and a merchant vessel; what they didn’t have was the slightest idea of what to do next. Of course, they took the path that revolutionaries almost always take – they formed committees and talked about it, aided by a number of socialists from Odessa who had boarded the vessel (the sailors were somewhat suspicious of the landsmen; Bascomb points out that revolutionaries all over the world took advantage of the Potemkin mutiny to issue proclamations of support, but nobody offered anything material. Lenin quickly acted to lambaste the Mensheviks for not being sufficiently enthusiastic). Many stirring speeches were made and met with enthusiastic applause. The various plans proposed were bombarding the city until the military surrendered, going to the main naval base at Sevastapol and shelling it; going to Sevastapol and surrendering; going to Batum and joining revolutionaries there; and sailing to Romania and asking for political asylum. While all this was going on, the Saint George was retaken by her petty officers; they attempted to leave they harbor but were ordered to stop by Potemkin; they then turned around and drove Saint George hard aground.


That left Potemkin in a precarious position. Although the Saint George couldn’t maneuver, it had been boarded by the army and its guns could be used against Potemkin if she stayed in Odessa. The crew then voted to take her to Romania to obtain supplies. Romanian authorities were understandably not very enthusiastic about giving aid to a mutinous vessel, so Potemkin sailed again, this time to the Crimean port of Theodosia. They dithered with the mayor and military commander; they were given some food but couldn’t obtain coal and several sailors were killed and captured trying to seize some coal barges (the crew of the Potemkin was very reluctant to fire on anybody, since their targets were workers, soldiers, and peasants just like them. The soldiers ashore did not share that reluctance). That left the Potemkin desperately short of coal and with her boilers failing since they were using sea water. They had just enough fuel to make it back to Constanza and internment at half speed, so that’s what they did. (In what I consider a shortcoming, Bascomb provides very little information on the logistics of the Black Sea Fleet. From the Potemkin’s fuel, food, and water shortages I suspect ships in the Black Sea Fleet carried very little in the way of supplies, on the assumption that they were never more than a day or so from a friendly replenishment port.)


Since Matushenko is his focus, Bascomb follows his post-mutiny career. He travelled to Switzerland, then briefly to France, England, and the United States (where he worked for the Singer Sewing Machine company). He went back to Europe and, seemingly with something of a death wish, returned to Russia where he was captured and hanged in 1907 (I wonder where a simple sailor got the resources to do all that travelling? Bascomb doesn’t say). Some of the other mutineers appeared as extras in the movie – and later, ironically, were purged by Stalin.


While the bibliography is good and there are some pictures of the participants, the book is handicapped by a lack of relevant illustrations – a map of the Black Sea, a deck plan of the Potemkin, and a map of Odessa. This last is especially ironic since one of the problems faced by Potemkin when she attempted to shell the city is there were no street plans available; one of the crew was put ashore in civilian clothes to buy one. I’d also like to see a little more about the technical aspects of a pre-Dreadnought battleship and the logistics and organization of the Russian military.


As mentioned, disappointing; it does seem to be the only game in town, however. ( )

Highly recommend. Oh, the world could have been much different place if they had done it successfully, actually overthrown the infrastructure, but they just couldn't quite do it. I wanted a different outcome the whole time but the book was an excellent history of the pieces of the mutiny. ( )

I knew of the Potemkin from my days studying cinema at University. However, I'm glad I took the time to fully understand the role that the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin played in kick-starting the Russian revolution. This is an accessible account of what happened and the broader political context that fueled the mutiny. ( )