Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin by Neal Bascomb

"The protagonist of New York Times best-selling author Bascomb's (The Perfect Mile) account of the 1905 mutiny that inspired the Russian Revolution did not seem to have revolutionary tendencies before being drafted into the Russian navy in 1900. Yet Afanasy Matyushenko learned early as a member of the peasantry to resent being treated as ignorant chattel. A weapons machinist in the Black Sea Fleet aboard the tsars' newest battleship, the Potemkin, he was treated poorly and forced to work under dangerous conditions. With the help of several comrades, he engineered the takeover of the Potemkin, which ended up crisscrossing the Black Sea for 11 days with the tsar's navy in pursuit. Eventually, the mutinous crew surrendered. Given asylum, Matyushenko traveled abroad but was in the end hanged in his homeland. His legacy, according to Bascomb, was his having been a major force in ending the war with Japan and weakening Tsar Nicholas II's hold on his empire."

~ Harry Willems, Park City P.L., KS Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.