April 1917: The Red Wheel, Node IV, Book 1

April 1917, Book 1, captures the division and helplessness of Russia's first Revolutionary rulers, paving the way for the victory of the ruthless Bolsheviks later that year.

One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. April 1917-the fourth node-shows the intractable divisions that would lead Russia to catastrophic Communist dictatorship and civil war. Whereas the first three nodes of The Red Wheel form its first act, "The Revolution," April 1917 opens its second act, "The Rule of the People."

The action of Book 1 (of two) is set during April 11-May 5, 1917. Book 1 presents an early showdown, just seven weeks into the revolution, between its various wings. The Provisional Government comes under fire for its "bourgeois" capitalism and continuing commitment to World War I. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returns from exile and delivers his April Theses in Petrograd, actively sowing seeds of division. He declares that the revolution is not complete and openly calls for civil war, outlining a radical plan to overthrow the Provisional Government and seize power for the Soviets. Amid the chaos and rising tide of Bolshevism, the elements of resistance, and decency, slowly begin to awaken.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Nobel Prize laureate in literature, was a Soviet political prisoner from 1945 to 1953. His story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) made him famous, and The Gulag Archipelago (1973) further unmasked Communism and played a critical role in its eventual defeat. Solzhenitsyn was exiled to the West in 1974. He ultimately published dozens of plays, poems, novels, and works of history, nonfiction, and memoir, including In the First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Red Wheel epic, The Oak and the Calf, and Between Two Millstones.

Clare Kitson is a Russian literary translator. She is co-translator of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2.