August 1914: the red wheel (Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr)(1989, paperback)

August 1914 describes the disastrous advance by the Russian army into East Prussia at the outbreak of the First World War, and its virtual annihilation at the hands of the Germans. Using the techniques of non-fiction within a fictional framework, it is a brilliant evocation not only of a military campaign but also of the most significant events in Russian society and political life from the beginning of the century up to the outbreak of war.

New material includes fascinating portraits of Pyotr Stolypin, the great Russian statesman, and his assassin, Bogrov, and a complex study of the last Russian Tsar, Nikolai I, whose calamitous reign led to the tragic events of August 1914.