“Eric Blanc's remarkable new book should revolutionize the way scholars and activists think about the Russian Revolution. By looking not just at Petrograd or Russia but at the entire Russian Empire—including Finland, Ukraine, and Poland—Blanc's pathbreaking comparative analysis examines how and why revolutionary processes diverge under parliamentary and autocratic regimes. Drawing on far-flung sources in eight languages, Blanc breaks with the Russocentrism of earlier accounts and effectively deprovincializes the revolution. Among other things, he demonstrates that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not nearly as exceptional as is often thought. This book is an extraordinary achievement.”
—Jeff Goodwin, New York University

”Anyone interested in the Russian Revolution will need to read this outstanding contribution. Puncturing myths, cliches, and unsupported interpretations, Eric Blanc explores a forgotten historical reality—revolutionary social democracy—by vividly documenting the actual strategic outlooks and local practices of Second International Marxists across the Russian Empire, as well as Germany, the homeland of this political current. An impressively wide reading in sources from many languages allows Blanc to demonstrate the importance of borderland socialists in the revolutionary drama, bringing to life activists at all levels of party organizations throughout imperial Russia and challenging us to rethink long-held assumptions about major figures such as Lenin and Kautsky.”
—Lars T. Lih, author Lenin Rediscovered

“Through impressive research and erudite argumentation, this monumental study of the broad array of 'revolutionary social democratic' parties that operated in the non-Russian borderlands of the Tsarist Empire in the decades leading to 1917 definitively shows why there was no 'one-size-fits-all' revolutionary practice and why there is no reason to overgeneralize the international relevance of the form taken by the October Revolution. A tour de force which provides strong historical foundations for all those today working to develop an anticapitalist, democratic socialist political strategy for renewed working-class formation and state transformation.”
—Leo Panitch, former editor Socialist Register

“There is no doubt that Revolutionary Social Democracy is an exemplary work that offers a wealth of resources for studying a prior era. It should be read, re-read, discussed, and debated as widely as possible. We owe a debt of gratitude to Blanc that he has afforded us the opportunity.” 
—Peter Hudis, Spectre

“Eric Blanc's Revolutionary Social Democracy is a book that everyone with an interest in Soviet history, Marxism, the political sociology of class, and prospects for working-class organization should read.”
—Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Slavic Review

“Blanc’s well-grounded comparative study of Social Democracy in the Russian Empire is a strong contribution to this process of rethinking the roots of the October Revolution and its impact on international socialism.”
—William Smaldone, H-Net Reviews

“Blanc advocates very well for the politics of Kautskyism as expressed in the Erfurt Programme, and corrects a number of historical falsehoods.”
—Duncan Hart, Marxist Left Review

“Blanc's admirable amount of archival research enables him to make an original contribution to the underdeveloped field of multi-national perspectives on the revolutions of 1917.” 
—Jóhann Páll Árnason, Acta Sociologica

“A breathtaking account of labour politics and socialist activity across the borderlands of the Russian empire in the decades preceding the 1917 Revolution.”
—Wiktor Marzec, Captial & Class

“[A] truly ambitious and encyclopedic history of what the author calls 'revolutionary social democracy'.”
—Samuel Farber, New Politics