Michael Prawdin – författare

First published in 1961 The Unmentionable Nechaev presents a full account of Sergei Nechaev’s extraordinary life. The name of Nechaev is little known today in the western world. Michael Prawdin expounds his teachings and shows the strain of Nechaevism running through the Russian revolutionary movement and the part it played in the success of the Bolshevik revolution. Step by step the author analyses Lenin’s build up of his party and reveals how he used Nechaev’s conspiratory system. The book explains why at the moment of victory Nechaev was suddenly hailed as an ancestor of Bolshevism only to be just as suddenly once more repudiated and relegated to obscurity. This book is an essential read for scholars and researchers of Soviet history, Communist history, and history in general.

First published in 1961 The Unmentionable Nechaev presents a full account of Sergei Nechaev’s extraordinary life. The name of Nechaev is little known today in the western world. Michael Prawdin expounds his teachings and shows the strain of Nechaevism running through the Russian revolutionary movement and the part it played in the success of the Bolshevik revolution. Step by step the author analyses Lenin’s build up of his party and reveals how he used Nechaev’s conspiratory system. The book explains why at the moment of victory Nechaev was suddenly hailed as an ancestor of Bolshevism only to be just as suddenly once more repudiated and relegated to obscurity. This book is an essential read for scholars and researchers of Soviet history, Communist history, and history in general.

First published in 1963. The Moguls, the descendants of the Mongols, two and a half centuries later than Jenghiz Khan, created an empire that stretched from Persia to Burma and from the Himalayas to the centre of the Indian subcontinent. It was a creation almost more astonishing than Jenghiz Khan's own: an empire that was civilized and prosperous, and which left behind an artistic legacy that has been a wonder till this day.Michael Prawdin tells the story which begins with Babur, passes through the reign of Humayun, and finds its climax at the death of Akbar. By this time the empire was no longer a patchwork of incidental conquests dominated by the arms of foreign invaders, but a coherent landmass that had been welded into a co-ordinated state, ruled by one system of administration. The diverse lands had become so many different provinces, held together by a highly organized bureaucracy in which Mohammedans and Hindus were equally eligible to the highest posts, honours and privileges. Moreover, a new cultural synthesis of the Hindu and Moslem cultures had taken shape, and throughout the empire all peoples showed the same demand for knowledge, art, poetry and for refinements of all kinds.

First published in 1963. The Moguls, the descendants of the Mongols, two and a half centuries later than Jenghiz Khan, created an empire that stretched from Persia to Burma and from the Himalayas to the centre of the Indian subcontinent. It was a creation almost more astonishing than Jenghiz Khan's own: an empire that was civilized and prosperous, and which left behind an artistic legacy that has been a wonder till this day.Michael Prawdin tells the story which begins with Babur, passes through the reign of Humayun, and finds its climax at the death of Akbar. By this time the empire was no longer a patchwork of incidental conquests dominated by the arms of foreign invaders, but a coherent landmass that had been welded into a co-ordinated state, ruled by one system of administration. The diverse lands had become so many different provinces, held together by a highly organized bureaucracy in which Mohammedans and Hindus were equally eligible to the highest posts, honours and privileges. Moreover, a new cultural synthesis of the Hindu and Moslem cultures had taken shape, and throughout the empire all peoples showed the same demand for knowledge, art, poetry and for refinements of all kinds.

In his prologue to The Mongol Empire, Michael Prawdin sets the stage for the last and mightiest onslaught of the nomads upon the civilized world. He tells of the many rejoicings in Europe over the successes of the Crusaders in A.D. 1221. But little did Europe know that two decades later, the Mongol hordes organized by Genghis Khan would turn the Middle East into a heap of ruins and spread terror throughout the West. A work of enduring scholarship and literary excellence, The Mongol Empire is a classic on the rise and fall of the world's largest empire. It describes the incredible ascent of the Mongol people, which, through the political and military genius of Genghis Khan, overwhelmed and subdued the nations of most of the world. It demonstrates the transformation of barbarous nomads into the most efficient rulers of their time and describes the crumbling of their vast empire and the assumption of its legacy by the formerly subjugated China and Russia. Maurice Collis in Time and Tide said of The Mongol Empire: "It has the rare merit of being both scholarly and exciting.... The entire world comes on to his canvas, romantic and fantastical persons pass in our view, and at the conclusion we realize that we have seen the whole of what Marco Polo saw only in part." while The Observer commented, "it is a fine book, full of dramatic occasion well used, clear in proportions."