In the article images of revolutionary Russia in the early novels of the German-speaking writer Joseph Roth (1894-1939) "Flight without end" (1927) and "The Mute Prophet" (1929) are analyzed. The Russian revolution is depicted in these texts as a monstrous enterprise, carried out by random people from personal motives. It does not lead to the creation of a state and a man of a new type and therefore it seems senseless bloodshed. This negative assessment shows that the writer believed this path of development to be unpromising and his writings warned Western European readers of excessive admiration for the Soviet experiment.