Caught in the Revolution Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Helen Rappaport

  Title Page

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Glossary of Eyewitnesses

  Author’s Note

  Map of Petrograd 1917

  Prologue: ‘The Air is Thick with Talk of Catastrophe’

  PART 1: THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION

  1 ‘Women are Beginning to Rebel at Standing in Bread Lines’

  2 ‘No Place for an Innocent Boy from Kansas’

  3 ‘Like a Bank Holiday with Thunder in the Air’

  4 ‘A Revolution Carried on by Chance’

  5 Easy Access to Vodka ‘Would Have Precipitated a Reign of Terror’

  6 ‘Good to be Alive These Marvelous Days’

  7 ‘People Still Blinking in the Light of the Sudden Deliverance’

  8 The Field of Mars

  9 Bolsheviki! It Sounds ‘Like All that the World Fears’

  PART 2: THE JULY DAYS

  10 ‘The Greatest Thing in History since Joan of Arc’

  11 ‘What Would the Colony Say if We Ran Away?’

  12 ‘This Pest-Hole of a Capital’

  PART 3: THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

  13 ‘For Color and Terror and Grandeur This Makes Mexico Look Pale’

  14 ‘We Woke Up to Find the Town in the Hands of the Bolsheviks’

  15 ‘Crazy People Killing Each Other Just Like We Swat Flies at Home’

  Postscript: The Forgotten Voices of Petrograd

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Picture Section

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Caught in the Revolution is Helen Rappaport’s masterful telling of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution through eye-witness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold.

  Between the first revolution in February 1917 and Lenin’s Bolshevik coup in October, Petrograd (the former St Petersburg) was in turmoil – felt nowhere more keenly than on the fashionable Nevsky Prospekt where the foreign visitors and diplomats who filled hotels, clubs, bars and embassies were acutely aware of the chaos breaking out on their doorsteps and beneath their windows.

  Among this disparate group were journalists, businessmen, bankers, governesses, volunteer nurses and expatriate socialites. Many kept diaries and wrote letters home: from an English nurse who had already survived the sinking of the Titanic; to the black valet of the US Ambassador, far from his native Deep South; to suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, who had come to Petrograd to inspect the indomitable Women’s Death Battalion led by Maria Bochkareva.

  Helen Rappaport draws upon this rich trove of material, much of it previously unpublished, to carry us right up to the action – to see, feel and hear the Revolution as it happened to a diverse group of individuals who suddenly felt themselves trapped in a ‘red madhouse.’

  About the Author

  Helen Rappaport is an historian and Russianist with specialisms in the Victorians and revolutionary Russia.

  Her books include No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War, Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street – Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer, Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy; Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses and Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, 1917. A fluent Russian speaker, she has translated many classic Russian plays (including all of Chekhov’s) and was historical consultant to Tom Stoppard’s National Theatre trilogy The Coast of Utopia (2002). She is also a frequent contributor to television and radio documentaries, most recently Russia’s Lost Princesses (BBC2, 2014). She lives in West Dorset.

  Also by Helen Rappaport

  No Place for Ladies

  Joseph Stalin

  An Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers

  Queen Victoria

  Ekaterinburg

  Conspirator

  Beautiful for Ever

  Magnificent Obsession

  Four Sisters

  With William Horwood

  Dark Hearts of Chicago

  With Roger Watson

  Capturing the Light

  For Caroline Michel

  List of Illustrations

  1. The Nevsky Prospekt in Petrograd c. 1910. (Photo by Photoinstitut Bonartes/Imagno/Getty Images)

  2. A sewing party at the British Embassy in Petrograd organized by Lady Georgina Buchanan, who stands at the head of the table. (Private Collection / Bridgeman Images)

  3. Sir George Buchanan, pictured in 1912. (Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  4. Maurice Paléologue, the French Ambassador to Russia, c. 1914 (Private Collection / Bridgeman Images)

  5. Sir George Buchanan dining with staff at the British Embassy in Petrograd (Courtesy of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham)

  6. US Ambassador to the Russian Empire David R. Francis and his valet Phil Jordan, pictured here aboard the Swedish steamship Oscar II headed to Oslo from New York (Courtesy of Missouri History Museum Library and Research Centre)

  7. Francis with counsellor J. Butler Wright, being chauffeured in Petrograd by Phil Jordan in the US Embassy’s Model T Ford. (Courtesy of Missouri History Museum Library and Research Centre)

  8. Leighton Rogers, a young American clerk at the National City Bank of New York in Petrograd (Courtesy of the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)

  9. Julia Cantacuzène-Speransky, granddaughter of US President Ulysses S. Grant, American wife of a Russian prince, and subsequently a memoirist of the Russian Revolution. (Courtesy of Ulysses Grant Dietz Collection)

  10. The intrepid war photographer and cinematographer Donald C. Thompson. (Author’s collection)

  11. James Negley Farson, American journalist and adventurer. (Alamy)

  12. Arthur Ransome, correspondent for the Daily News at the time of the Revolution. (Courtesy of the Arthur Ransome Trust. Reproduced with the permission of Special Collections, Leeds University Library.)

  13. Journalist Florence Harper, pictured while working as a nurse at an American Field Hospital in Ukraine during 1917. (Author’s collection)

  14. A bread line in Petrograd in 1917 (© SPUTNIK/Alamy)

  15. Nursing sisters and a wounded young soldier at the Anglo Russian Hospital (Library and Archives Canada)

  16. The International Women’s Day parade in Petrograd, 23 February 1917 that sparked a wave of popular protest at bread shortages. (Everett Collection Historical/Alamy)

  17. Donald C Thompson’s picture shows how the February Revolution claimed fatal casualties faster than the morgues could cope with. (© akg-images/Alamy)

  18. Revolutionary barricades on Liteiny Prospekt, March 1917 (Alamy)

  19. Cossack troops on patrol in Petrograd. (Slava Katamidze Collection/Getty Images)

  20. ‘Shoot the Pharaos on their roofs . . .’: a propaganda postcard urging popular resistance to the police (known derisively as ‘pharaohs’ or faraony) who would snipe at revolutionaries from rooftops. (akg-images)

  21. The toppling of imperial monuments, February 27 1917. (akg-images)

  22. Shop-front Imperial emblems thrown onto the ice under a bridge across the Fontanka Canal (© Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images)

  23. Nurses with a wounded soldier at the Anglo Russian Hospital, observing events on the Nevsky Prospekt below. (Library and Archives Canada)

  24. An artist’s rendering of the attack on the Hotel Astoria, February 28 1917 (Chronicle / Alamy)

  25. The lobby of the Astoria after t
he attack, its floor bloodstained, a revolutionary sentry on guard (Author’s Collection)

  26. Official buildings of the old tsarist regime, the first institutions to be attacked during the February Revolution: The District Court … (akg-images/ullstein bild)

  27. … The Litovsky Prison (Illustrated London News Picture Library/Bridgeman Images)

  28. … and Police Station No. 4 (akg-images / Sputnik)

  29. A burnt fragment of a secret police record picked up on the street by American bank clerk Leighton Rogers (Courtesy of the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)

  30. Soldiers digging the mass grave for the victims of the February Revolution at the Field of Mars. (akg-images/Sputnik)

  31. The funeral procession for the dead of February (© Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

  32. A crowded session of the Petrograd Soviet in the Tauride Palace (© SPUTNIK/Alamy)

  33. Romanov coats of arms are burned in Petrograd, May 1917 (© Heritage Image Partnership/Alamy)

  34. Troops of the Petrograd Women’s Death Battalion (© Tobie Mathew Collection / Bridgeman Images)

  35. Commander of the Women’s Death Battalion Maria Bochkareva with Emmeline Pankhurst, their mutual regard clear (Everett Collection Historical / Alamy)

  36. Jessie Kenney, suffragette and former mill worker who accompanied Emmeline Pankhurst to Russia. (Courtesy of Kenney Papers, University of East Anglia)

  37. The Daily Mirror front page reports July Days violence in Petrograd. (© John Frost Newspapers/Alamy)

  38. The American journalist John Reed, a ‘charismatic socialist and professional rebel’ (Granger, NYC/Alamy)

  39. Feminist journalist Louise Bryant, who travelled to Russia with Reed, her husband (Evening Standard/Getty Images)

  40. People run for cover during a gun battle on Nevsky Prospect in October 1917 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  41. A room in the Tsar’s Winter Palace, ransacked by the Bolsheviks after they took the Palace with little or no resistance. (Slava Katamidze Collection/Getty Images)

  Glossary of Eyewitnesses

  Anet, Claude (pseudonym of Jean Schopfer) (1868–1931). Swiss-born French tennis champion, antiquities collector, journalist and writer reporting for Le Petit Parisien.

  Arbenina, Stella (Baroness Meyendorff; née Whishaw) (1885–1976). British actress from a long-standing family in the Anglo-Russian colony in St Petersburg; she married Russian aristocrat Baron Meyendorff. Arrested after the revolution; released in 1918, she settled in Estonia.

  Armour, Norman (1887–1982). American career diplomat; Second Secretary at US embassy in Petrograd 1916–18. Returned to Russia not long after he left, to rescue stranded Princess Mariya Kudasheva, whom he married in 1919. Later served as diplomat in Paris, Haiti, Canada, Chile, Argentina and Spain.

  Azabal, Lilie Bouton de Fernandez see Countess Nostitz

  Beatty, Bessie (1886–1947). American journalist, worked in California for the San Francisco Bulletin before travelling to Russia. Continued in journalism after the revolution; during the 1940s based in New York City, became a popular radio broadcaster.

  Berlin, Isaiah (1909–97). Russian-born British scholar and historian of ideas; grew up in Riga and St Petersburg; his family moved to Great Britain in 1921.

  Bowerman, Elsie (1889–1973). English suffragette; orderly with a Russian hospital unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals; later the first woman barrister at the Old Bailey.

  Bruce, Henry James (1880–1951). Head of the British Chancery in Petrograd; in 1915 he had married the Russian prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina.

  Bryant, Louise (1885–1936). American journalist and socialist from the Greenwich Village set; travelled to Petrograd with her husband, John Reed, in 1917; married again after Reed’s death in 1920 and lived in Paris.

  Buchanan, Meriel (1886–1959). Daughter of British ambassador Sir George Buchanan; volunteer nurse at British Colony Hospital in Petrograd run by her mother, Lady Georgina Buchanan, during World War I. After leaving Russia wrote numerous books and articles about her time there.

  Bury, George (1865–1958). Canadian shipper and Vice President of the Canadian Pacific Railway; in Russia during World War I to report on the railway system for the British government. Knighted in 1917.

  (Lady) Buchanan, Georgina (1863–1922). Scion of the influential Bathurst family, wife of British ambassador in Petrograd, Sir George Buchanan, and mother of Meriel Buchanan; active in relief work in Petrograd during World War I and patron of British Colony Hospital.

  (Sir) Buchanan, George (1854–1924). Distinguished British diplomat and son of an ambassador. Served in many locations, beginning with Berlin in 1901; British ambassador to Russia from 1910.

  Cantacuzène-Speransky, Princess (1876–1975). Born Julia Dent Grant, American socialite, granddaughter of President Ulysses S. Grant. Fled to USA after the revolution and was doyenne of White Russian community in Washington; divorced her Russian husband in 1934.

  Chadbourn, Philip (who wrote his account of Petrograd under the pseudonym of Paul Wharton) (1889–1970). American relief worker in France and Belgium during World War I; sent to Petrograd to inspect and report on camps for internees in Russia.

  Chambrun, Charles de (1875–1952). French diplomat and writer; First Secretary at Petrograd embassy from 1914.

  Chandler Whipple, George (1866–1924). American engineer and sanitation expert who travelled to Petrograd with the American Red Cross Mission as Deputy Commissioner for Russia.

  Clare, (Rev.) Joseph (1885–?). English Congregational preacher and bachelor of divinity; pastor of the American Church in Petrograd from 1913. Settled in Illinois after he left Russia and took US citizenship.

  Cotton, Dorothy (1886–1977). Montreal-trained nursing sister with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, who served at the Anglo-Russian Hospital November 1915–June 1916 and January– August 1917.

  Crosley, Pauline (1867–1955). Wife of US Naval attaché, Captain Walter Selwyn Crosley; in Petrograd March 1917–March 1918, the Crosleys had a hair-raising escape out of Russia during the Civil War.

  Dearing, Fred (1879–1963). American diplomat, worked at Peking legation 1908–9; in Russia in 1916–17 oversaw the transition from ambassador George F. Marye to David R. Francis.

  Dorr, Rheta Childe (1868–1948). American journalist, feminist and political activist; friend of Emmeline Pankhurst. Went to Petrograd as correspondent of the New York Evening Mail, and published one of the earliest American accounts of the July Days. A motor accident after her return to the USA seriously impaired her professional life thereafter.

  Dosch-Fleurot, Arno (1879–1951). American journalist; remained in Europe as foreign correspondent after 1917 and became special correspondent for International News Service in Berlin. As an outspoken critic of Nazis, was arrested and interned; in 1941 settled in Spain.

  Farson, Negley (1890–1960). Born in New York, he settled in the UK. In Petrograd during World War I, as agent for an Anglo-American export business trying to secure orders for motorbikes from the Russian government. Later turned to travel writing and journalism; sometime foreign correspondent of Chicago Daily News.

  Francis, David R. (1850–1927). US ambassador to Russia 1916–18; formerly mayor of St Louis (1885) and governor of Missouri (1889–93).

  Fuller, John Louis (1894–1962). Indianapolis businessman and insurance executive; trainee with National City Bank in Petrograd 1917–18. Colleague of Leighton Rogers, Fred Sikes and Chester Swinnerton.

  Garstin, Denis (1890–1918). English cavalry captain seconded as intelligence officer in the British Propaganda Unit in Petrograd; killed during the Allied Intervention at Arkhangelsk.

  Gibson, William J. (dates unknown) Born in Canada, he grew up in St Petersburg and served in the Russian army in 1914; newspaper correspondent in Petrograd 1917; left Russia in 1918.

  Grant, Julia see Princess Cantacuzène-Speransky

  Grant, Lilias (1878–1975). Hospital orderly from Inverness, serving
with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals on the Eastern Front; visited Petrograd with her fellow orderly Ethel Moir.

  (Lady) Grey, Sybil (1882–1966). British VAD, who assisted Lady Muriel Paget in the running of the Anglo-Russian Hospital; daughter of former Governor-General of Canada and cousin to British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey.

  Hall, Bert (1885–1948). American combat aviator who flew with the French Lafayette Escadrille prior to US entry into World War I.

  Harper, Florence (1886–?). Canadian staff reporter for Leslie’s Weekly, who worked in tandem with war photographer Donald Thompson in Petrograd.

  Harper, Samuel (1882–1943). American Slavicist; made numerous trips to Russia with official delegations as interpreter and guide, including the 1917 Root Mission to Petrograd. An unofficial adviser to David R. Francis.

  Heald, Edward (1885–1967). Member of International Committee of the YMCA, sent to Russia to monitor the treatment of German and Austrian POWs. In Petrograd 1916–19.

  Hegan, Edith (1881–1973). Canadian nurse from St John, New Brunswick, who served with Canadian Army Medical Corps in France before being posted to the Anglo-Russian Hospital in May 1916.

  Houghteling, James (1883–1962). Chicago-born diplomat and newspaperman; special attaché at US Petrograd embassy; Vice President of Chicago Daily News 1926–31, later became a commissioner for US Bureau of Immigration & Naturalization.

  Jefferson, Geoffrey (1886–1961). English surgeon at the Anglo-Russian Hospital; when it closed he transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps on the Western Front. In later life he became an eminent neurosurgeon and FRCS.

  Jones, James Stinton (1884–1979). South African-born mechanical engineer; worked in Russia 1905–17 for Westinghouse on the electrification of the Petrograd tramways; also oversaw installation of generator at Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo.

  Jordan, Phil(ip) (1868–1941). Black valet, cook and chauffeur from Jefferson City, Missouri, in service to David R. Francis and his family from 1889; accompanied Francis to Russia in 1916.

  Judson, William J. (1865–1923). US army engineer; military attaché at Petrograd embassy June 1917–January 1918, responsible for security of US citizens in Russia.

 
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