What do you think?
Rate this book
Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy
Epic in scope, precise in detail, and heart-breaking in its human drama, Former People is the first book to recount the history of the aristocracy caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of Stalin’s Russia. Filled with chilling tales of looted palaces and burning estates, of desperate flights in the night from marauding peasants and Red Army soldiers, of imprisonment, exile, and execution, it is the story of how a centuries’-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the Tsar and Empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia.
Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class—so-called “former people” and “class enemies”—overcame the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families—the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns—the book reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on.
Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia’s most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.
Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class—so-called “former people” and “class enemies”—overcame the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families—the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns—the book reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on.
Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia’s most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2012
About the author
Douglas Smith
6 books118 followersDouglas Smith is an awarding-winning historian and translator and the author of four books on Russia. He studied German and Russian at the University of Vermont and has a doctorate in history from UCLA.
Over the past twenty-five years Smith has made many trips to Russia. In the 1980s, he was a Russian-speaking guide on the U. S. State Department’s exhibition “Information USA” that traveled throughout the USSR. He has worked as a Soviet affairs analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany specializing in Russian nationalism and served as an interpreter for late President Reagan.
Smith has taught and lectured widely in the United States, Britain, and Europe and has appeared in documentaries for A&E and National Geographic. He is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including a Fulbright scholarship and a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center.
His latest book, Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy, was published in 2012 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S. and Macmillan in the U.K. Read an interview with Douglas Smith about Former People and listen to his interview on KUOW Radio.
Douglas Smith is currently writing a biography of Grigory Rasputin to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2016.
Over the past twenty-five years Smith has made many trips to Russia. In the 1980s, he was a Russian-speaking guide on the U. S. State Department’s exhibition “Information USA” that traveled throughout the USSR. He has worked as a Soviet affairs analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany specializing in Russian nationalism and served as an interpreter for late President Reagan.
Smith has taught and lectured widely in the United States, Britain, and Europe and has appeared in documentaries for A&E and National Geographic. He is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including a Fulbright scholarship and a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center.
His latest book, Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy, was published in 2012 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S. and Macmillan in the U.K. Read an interview with Douglas Smith about Former People and listen to his interview on KUOW Radio.
Douglas Smith is currently writing a biography of Grigory Rasputin to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2016.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 239 reviews
August 14, 2019
For a long book it says so little. Or perhaps, coming from Russian peasants as I do, escaping the pogroms and repression imposed by the aristocracy and the bureaucrats, I didn't have the right frame of mind, the right sympathies to appreciate it. My family, my great grandparent, on both sides, were refugees because of their policies. I did appreciate the plight of the 'former people' deprived of their wealth, glory and most importantly status, but didn't care about them at all. 3.5 stars.
Rewritten caustically Aug 2019
Rewritten caustically Aug 2019
February 26, 2019
This is certainly "Epic in scope" and "intimate in detail" and Douglas Smith describes what happened to the Sheremetevs and Golitsyn's families, two of Russia's grandest and oldest aristocratic families during and after the Russian Revolution.
I really enjoy Russian history and have read quite a lot of non fiction on the Russian Revolution but this one came across as quite dry and dense. While the author focus his research on two families there are a lot of other family names mentioned throughout this account and even through there is long list of principal figures and two pages of family trees at the beginning of the book I still had great difficulty keeping track of who was who and who belonged and who belonged to which family.
This felt more like a chore to pick up and sift through the information that was of interest to me. It is without a brilliantly researched book and is based on diaries and other written material of these families. The harshness and cruelty of the regime of the time is well documented and makes for difficult reading. As always I really enjoyed the maps and photos included as these really do help the reader establish a connection.
This book didn't suit me as it was too dense and dry and I felt it felt more like study than reading for pleasure and while I waded through I didn't really enjoy the experience. However I appreciate that this is well written and researched and other readers may love this book for the very reasons I didn't.
I really enjoy Russian history and have read quite a lot of non fiction on the Russian Revolution but this one came across as quite dry and dense. While the author focus his research on two families there are a lot of other family names mentioned throughout this account and even through there is long list of principal figures and two pages of family trees at the beginning of the book I still had great difficulty keeping track of who was who and who belonged and who belonged to which family.
This felt more like a chore to pick up and sift through the information that was of interest to me. It is without a brilliantly researched book and is based on diaries and other written material of these families. The harshness and cruelty of the regime of the time is well documented and makes for difficult reading. As always I really enjoyed the maps and photos included as these really do help the reader establish a connection.
This book didn't suit me as it was too dense and dry and I felt it felt more like study than reading for pleasure and while I waded through I didn't really enjoy the experience. However I appreciate that this is well written and researched and other readers may love this book for the very reasons I didn't.
August 19, 2018
Although I have read many books about Russian history and, in particular the Russian Revolution, this is a story that I don't think has ever been told before. The term 'Former People' was, rather chillingly, applied to members of the Russian Aristocracy after the revolution and this book tells of how the Russian elite was dispossesed and destroyed in the years between 1917 and WWII. The author has taken two major Russian families of this class - the Shevemetevs and the Golitsyns - to illustrate what happened to a whole group of people, allowing us to hear the very human stories of the catastrophe which overtook them.
The book begins in the years before the revolution, when a small educated elite were the rulers of a largely rural and feudal Russia. As the author calls them, they were "isolated islands of privilege in a sea of poverty and resentment." Many members of the nobility understood, and even sympathised, with the violence that erupted. Even members of the aristocracy who benefited from the system looked for restraint and ways to ease poverty and worried about the weakness of Tsar Nicholas II. When revolution eventually came, the aristocracy, alongside most of the population, blamed the Empress, and Rasputin, for the downfall. Count Sergei Shevemetev wrote, "the abnormal power of that woman (Alexandra) has led us precisely to that which any had foreseen." There were members of the aristocracy who welcomed the revolution and the abdication of the Tsar with relief - some who even tried to march in solidarity with the workers, but they were soon made aware that they were not welcome. Not only were they not welcome to support the revolution, they were, like it or not, enemies of it.
Of course, the revolution took place during WWI and most of the nobility, unsure of the changing world order and wishing to be patriotic, had brought their capital back to Russia. In the Civil War everything was taken from them. The nobility went to great lengths to try to hide their valuables - even going to the extremes of dismantling cars and burying them or sewing sugar between sheets. However, they were stripped of everything as the terror went on unchecked. "There is nothing immoral," Trotsky coldly affirmed, "in the proletariat finishing off a class that is collapsing; that is its right." Of course, the nobility were not the only ones who suffered, as concentration camps appeared, executions increased and famine swept the country. Many former nobles understood the feelings of those who had lived in poverty for so long and asked whether the tsarist or the soviet regime was the most criminal. Still, the murder of the Tsar and his family shocked a nation and when it was clear that the Red Army was winning by 1920, many fled into a life of exile. By 1921 Russia was in ruins, with ten million dead and millions more having abandoned the country.
We then come to the years of Stalin and the labour camps, or gulags, where so many people perished - many of them from the nobility who remained in Russia. 'Former People' were seen as a threat - there was nowhere left to hide. Many disappeared into the abyss of Stalin's Terror - never to be seen again. They were outcasts, not allowed to work, humiliated and starved. During 'Operation Former People' in 1935, more than 39,000 were expelled from Leningrad. As WWII approached, the remaining 'Former People' were accused of being pro-German, defeatists, traitors and spies. It seemed that the terror, and the hunt for them, was never ending.
This is a book of great human tragedy, but also of love and friendship and of the human will to survive and adapt. There are stories of personal misery, of great estates reduced to ruin, artwork and libraries plundered and damaged, people arrested, torture and murder. I read the kindle edition of this book and the illustrations, as so often in kindle books, are at the very end of the book. Do make sure you scroll to the end and look at these though, as many are very moving - none more so than two photographs of Vanya Tribetskoy. There is one of Vanya as a young girl, pretty and carefree. The second is her prison photograph. Vanya died a prisoner in the gulag at the age of only twenty four in 1943. Yet, to look at her, you would think she was double that age and the photo of what that poor young girl was reduced to, show her suffering as no words can. Of course, even the nobility themselves, understood that their lives of privilege could not continue indefinitely, but this is a moving and tragic account of a group that may have been labelled 'Former People', but were people nonetheless.
The book begins in the years before the revolution, when a small educated elite were the rulers of a largely rural and feudal Russia. As the author calls them, they were "isolated islands of privilege in a sea of poverty and resentment." Many members of the nobility understood, and even sympathised, with the violence that erupted. Even members of the aristocracy who benefited from the system looked for restraint and ways to ease poverty and worried about the weakness of Tsar Nicholas II. When revolution eventually came, the aristocracy, alongside most of the population, blamed the Empress, and Rasputin, for the downfall. Count Sergei Shevemetev wrote, "the abnormal power of that woman (Alexandra) has led us precisely to that which any had foreseen." There were members of the aristocracy who welcomed the revolution and the abdication of the Tsar with relief - some who even tried to march in solidarity with the workers, but they were soon made aware that they were not welcome. Not only were they not welcome to support the revolution, they were, like it or not, enemies of it.
Of course, the revolution took place during WWI and most of the nobility, unsure of the changing world order and wishing to be patriotic, had brought their capital back to Russia. In the Civil War everything was taken from them. The nobility went to great lengths to try to hide their valuables - even going to the extremes of dismantling cars and burying them or sewing sugar between sheets. However, they were stripped of everything as the terror went on unchecked. "There is nothing immoral," Trotsky coldly affirmed, "in the proletariat finishing off a class that is collapsing; that is its right." Of course, the nobility were not the only ones who suffered, as concentration camps appeared, executions increased and famine swept the country. Many former nobles understood the feelings of those who had lived in poverty for so long and asked whether the tsarist or the soviet regime was the most criminal. Still, the murder of the Tsar and his family shocked a nation and when it was clear that the Red Army was winning by 1920, many fled into a life of exile. By 1921 Russia was in ruins, with ten million dead and millions more having abandoned the country.
We then come to the years of Stalin and the labour camps, or gulags, where so many people perished - many of them from the nobility who remained in Russia. 'Former People' were seen as a threat - there was nowhere left to hide. Many disappeared into the abyss of Stalin's Terror - never to be seen again. They were outcasts, not allowed to work, humiliated and starved. During 'Operation Former People' in 1935, more than 39,000 were expelled from Leningrad. As WWII approached, the remaining 'Former People' were accused of being pro-German, defeatists, traitors and spies. It seemed that the terror, and the hunt for them, was never ending.
This is a book of great human tragedy, but also of love and friendship and of the human will to survive and adapt. There are stories of personal misery, of great estates reduced to ruin, artwork and libraries plundered and damaged, people arrested, torture and murder. I read the kindle edition of this book and the illustrations, as so often in kindle books, are at the very end of the book. Do make sure you scroll to the end and look at these though, as many are very moving - none more so than two photographs of Vanya Tribetskoy. There is one of Vanya as a young girl, pretty and carefree. The second is her prison photograph. Vanya died a prisoner in the gulag at the age of only twenty four in 1943. Yet, to look at her, you would think she was double that age and the photo of what that poor young girl was reduced to, show her suffering as no words can. Of course, even the nobility themselves, understood that their lives of privilege could not continue indefinitely, but this is a moving and tragic account of a group that may have been labelled 'Former People', but were people nonetheless.
November 9, 2022
The Heartbreaking Tale of the End of a People.
I read this book within three days, which speaks for itself in the quality of this book. Although short, the cruel and perverse story of what happened to Russia’s aristocracy following the revelation is well told. The book centres around two main families, the Counts Sheremetev and the Princes Golitsyn, but does extend into others, society and fate are clearly well connected. Others have criticised Douglas Smith’s work for this, as they wanted ‘a wider tale’ of the providence of the nobility. But this is missing the point. On focusing on the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns the story is more personal and more real. It makes you connect with the family members, draws anger and sadness at their inhuman treatment. The theft of property, the bulldozing of identity, state persecution, ostracism and constant trips to the gulag is a story which is repeated across the hundreds of thousands of former people, so is not needed to be expanded among these two once great families. Of course, many also got the pleasure of murder by the regime. Many of these only admitted by later governments.
The appalling tale is very sobering, with moments I could not believe happened. But then again this is in one of the most evil regimes in history. It is a warning shot that this could happen under many guises to us living in what we think is a secure society. But these people adapted in how they were allowed to, after everything was taken from them and through their disposition centred around one of the most important things in life: family.
I read this book within three days, which speaks for itself in the quality of this book. Although short, the cruel and perverse story of what happened to Russia’s aristocracy following the revelation is well told. The book centres around two main families, the Counts Sheremetev and the Princes Golitsyn, but does extend into others, society and fate are clearly well connected. Others have criticised Douglas Smith’s work for this, as they wanted ‘a wider tale’ of the providence of the nobility. But this is missing the point. On focusing on the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns the story is more personal and more real. It makes you connect with the family members, draws anger and sadness at their inhuman treatment. The theft of property, the bulldozing of identity, state persecution, ostracism and constant trips to the gulag is a story which is repeated across the hundreds of thousands of former people, so is not needed to be expanded among these two once great families. Of course, many also got the pleasure of murder by the regime. Many of these only admitted by later governments.
The appalling tale is very sobering, with moments I could not believe happened. But then again this is in one of the most evil regimes in history. It is a warning shot that this could happen under many guises to us living in what we think is a secure society. But these people adapted in how they were allowed to, after everything was taken from them and through their disposition centred around one of the most important things in life: family.
July 21, 2014
Former People is a revealing look into the end of an era and the chaos that followed. Smith shows the sweep of early 20th century Russian history personalized by the details of two extended noble families: The Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns. The details become overwhelming and tedious at times as Smith tracks numerous family members with similar experiences and similar names. It is easy to get confused and the text can feel repetitive. For example, accounts of pillaging and burning of estates during the revolution seem like a listing in a catalog. However, some sections fascinate, such as the escape into Siberia of members of the once privileged Golitsyn family in box cars packed with displaced families living in primitive conditions with little heat and the winter so cold the train’s wheels would freeze to the tracks. The escapees switch their boxcar from train to train to stay ahead of the advancing Red army.
The personal stories serve to illustrate the broader picture which is beyond grim. WWI and Tsar Nicholas II’s ineptness result in near famine, bitter repressed workers and deserting troops setting off a chaotic revolution and civil war. Peasants, brutally oppressed and exploited for centuries while the nobles enjoyed every luxury, take vicious revenge on their former lords. The economic decline is stunning. Smith points out that in 1921 the finished product produced by Russia was a mere 16% of what it had been 9 years earlier.
The Bolsheviks ruthlessly consolidate their power scapegoating class enemies as justification. The surviving estates and property of the former people now belong to the Soviet leadership, the new privileged class. Lenin’s brutal administration is followed by the even more paranoid and heartless Stalin culminating in the Great Terror.
Throughout the communist regime millions are imprisoned, tortured, killed or assigned to the slave labor camps, the Gulags. Millions of others are separated from their families in internal and external exile. A half century of mayhem and despair is capped off by the devastation of WWII and another 25 million dead and much of the country in ruins.
From 1917 on the former people knew they would always be targeted and could lose their freedom or lives at any time. Why more didn’t escape to Europe or other countries says something unique about the Russian psyche and its intense love of the motherland. How those who stayed survived all this with any hope defies the imagination!
The personal stories serve to illustrate the broader picture which is beyond grim. WWI and Tsar Nicholas II’s ineptness result in near famine, bitter repressed workers and deserting troops setting off a chaotic revolution and civil war. Peasants, brutally oppressed and exploited for centuries while the nobles enjoyed every luxury, take vicious revenge on their former lords. The economic decline is stunning. Smith points out that in 1921 the finished product produced by Russia was a mere 16% of what it had been 9 years earlier.
The Bolsheviks ruthlessly consolidate their power scapegoating class enemies as justification. The surviving estates and property of the former people now belong to the Soviet leadership, the new privileged class. Lenin’s brutal administration is followed by the even more paranoid and heartless Stalin culminating in the Great Terror.
Throughout the communist regime millions are imprisoned, tortured, killed or assigned to the slave labor camps, the Gulags. Millions of others are separated from their families in internal and external exile. A half century of mayhem and despair is capped off by the devastation of WWII and another 25 million dead and much of the country in ruins.
From 1917 on the former people knew they would always be targeted and could lose their freedom or lives at any time. Why more didn’t escape to Europe or other countries says something unique about the Russian psyche and its intense love of the motherland. How those who stayed survived all this with any hope defies the imagination!
January 6, 2013
I'm not so sure why people are so negative about this book, but I found it to be an extremely well written, captivating and eye opening account of the end of a class of people and how they struggled to adapt just to survive.
As always, stay here for the short discussion; for a longer one move on over to my online reading journal by clicking here.
At the center of this book are two families, the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns. Count Sergei Sheremetev (1844-1918) descended from a line of aristocratic nobles who were very close to Russia's imperial throne dating back to the 1500s. Sergei, a devoted patriarch and a "pillar of mindless Russian conservatism," firmly believed in autocratic rule and did not support the introduction of Western European institutions into his beloved Russia. He and his wife Princess Yekaterina Vyazemsky had seven children who grew up along with and were friends with the children of Nicholas II, and they had a number of servants, estate managers, governesses, valets and tutors. Prince Vladimir Golitsyn (1847-1932), known as "the Mayor," could trace his family's lineage back to the 14th-century founder of Lithuania. Much more liberal minded than Sergei Sheremetev, Vladimir was "ambivalent toward his own social class, preferring what he called 'an aristocracy of culture and intelligence, an aristocracy of lofty souls and sensitive hearts'". Former People takes the stories of these two families from the early 1900s through the period of Stalin's Great Terror and examines how they (and others of their class) came to be known as "former people," and how being determined as such affected their lives. It also looks at how they coped -- sometimes leaving Russia altogether, but more often than not staying in their beloved homeland and trying to rebuild their lives in order to survive. Around the stories of these two families, the author examines the historical events leading up to the downfall of the nobility as a class.
Using a wide variety of primary sources including diaries kept at the time, along with secondary works, the author has put together this amazing and fascinating book that is literally impossible to set aside. There are family trees of the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns that are helpful; I copied them so I wouldn't have to keep flipping back and forth each time I needed it as a reference. It is a book that will appeal to people who have any amount of interest in this time period and I most highly recommend it. And perhaps while it's easy to feel from our modern-day perspective that the aristocrats brought a lot of their future woes on themselves, and that their fate as a class only scratches the surface of the suffering people endured under both the Romanovs and the Soviets, it's also difficult not to feel sorry for them as human beings along with the millions of others who lost lives and loved ones in this tumultuous time period.
As always, stay here for the short discussion; for a longer one move on over to my online reading journal by clicking here.
At the center of this book are two families, the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns. Count Sergei Sheremetev (1844-1918) descended from a line of aristocratic nobles who were very close to Russia's imperial throne dating back to the 1500s. Sergei, a devoted patriarch and a "pillar of mindless Russian conservatism," firmly believed in autocratic rule and did not support the introduction of Western European institutions into his beloved Russia. He and his wife Princess Yekaterina Vyazemsky had seven children who grew up along with and were friends with the children of Nicholas II, and they had a number of servants, estate managers, governesses, valets and tutors. Prince Vladimir Golitsyn (1847-1932), known as "the Mayor," could trace his family's lineage back to the 14th-century founder of Lithuania. Much more liberal minded than Sergei Sheremetev, Vladimir was "ambivalent toward his own social class, preferring what he called 'an aristocracy of culture and intelligence, an aristocracy of lofty souls and sensitive hearts'". Former People takes the stories of these two families from the early 1900s through the period of Stalin's Great Terror and examines how they (and others of their class) came to be known as "former people," and how being determined as such affected their lives. It also looks at how they coped -- sometimes leaving Russia altogether, but more often than not staying in their beloved homeland and trying to rebuild their lives in order to survive. Around the stories of these two families, the author examines the historical events leading up to the downfall of the nobility as a class.
Using a wide variety of primary sources including diaries kept at the time, along with secondary works, the author has put together this amazing and fascinating book that is literally impossible to set aside. There are family trees of the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns that are helpful; I copied them so I wouldn't have to keep flipping back and forth each time I needed it as a reference. It is a book that will appeal to people who have any amount of interest in this time period and I most highly recommend it. And perhaps while it's easy to feel from our modern-day perspective that the aristocrats brought a lot of their future woes on themselves, and that their fate as a class only scratches the surface of the suffering people endured under both the Romanovs and the Soviets, it's also difficult not to feel sorry for them as human beings along with the millions of others who lost lives and loved ones in this tumultuous time period.
July 17, 2021
Annak, ahogy a bolsevik forradalom megsemmisítette az orosz arisztokráciát, van egy páratlan, és van egy rettenetes aspektusa. A páratlan az, hogy nem jut eszembe a történelemben még egy olyan helyzet, amikor a hatalomtól megfosztottak nemcsak letaszították a trónról azokat, akik addig az összes erőszakszervezetet és majd az összes forrást birtokolták, hanem totálisan meg is semmisítették őket, elképzelhetetlenné téve, hogy valaha is visszaszerezzék hatalmukat. Hogy lehetséges ez?
(A cári család 1913-ban. Amikor még minden szép és jó volt. Szerintük.)
Vannak persze nyilvánvaló okok, amiről már sokan sokat beszéltek, kár a szót vesztegetni rájuk. (Bár én mégis megteszem.) Az egyik ugye a háború, ami fegyvert adott a tömegek kezébe. A másik maga a háborús vereség, ami növelte a társadalom frusztrációját és kétségbeesését, no és persze világosan bebizonyította, hogy akik addig Oroszhon sorsát intézték, rosszul sáfárkodtak a felelősséggel, gyengék és megvetendőek. És köztük is a legmegvetendőbb maga a cár atyuska, Miklós, aki az egyetemes történelem egyik legAL-KAL-MAT-LANabb uralkodója. Mindent elmond róla, hogy amikor már az egész állam a káosz szakadékának szélén táncolt, ő még akkor is azt mantrázta, hogy nem neki kell visszaszereznie a nép bizalmát, hanem a népnek kell visszaszereznie az övét. Amiről egy Brecht idézet jut eszembe:
„A június 17-iki fölkelés után
az Írószövetség főtitkára
a Sztálin fasorban röplapokat osztatott szét,
melyek tudatták, hogy a nép
eljátszotta a kormány bizalmát
és csak kétszeres munkával
hódíthatja vissza. Nem volna ezúttal
egyszerűbb, ha a kormány
feloszlatná a népet
és újat választana?”
De vannak kevésbé nyilvánvaló okok is. Az egyik, hogy igazából Oroszországban nem beszélhetünk egységes nemességről – nemesekről beszélhetünk, akiknek érdekeik és ideológiájuk totálisan elütött. Közéjük tartozott a monarchista Seremetyev éppúgy, mint a liberális Golicin, de nemesnek mondhatta magát Nabokov is, vagy – hogy mást ne mondjak – maga Lenin. Ez a sokszínű társulat egy része nyilván felelős volt a jobbágyok elnyomásáért, a háborús vereségért, és a mérhetetlen szegénységért, ami megtörte az ország gerincét. Ugyanakkor ők voltak az orosz kult��ra hordozói is, közülük kerültek ki például a Tolsztojok – a próféta Lev éppúgy, mint a Sztálinnal kooperáló kollaboráns, Alekszej. Zömüknek eszébe se jutott kiállni a cár mellett, nekik is elegük volt a teszetosza uralkodóból, aki tévedhetetlenül csak azokhoz az ötleteihez ragaszkodott, amelyek utólag hülyeségnek bizonyultak. Persze a polgárháborúban jó részük a fehérekhez csatlakozott, de hát 1.) a fehéreknek sem voltak egységes nézeteik („üres volt a zászlójuk”, ahogy egy kortárs mondta volt), nagyjából az antiszemitizmus kötötte csak össze őket ideológiailag, más semmi 2.) a Vörös Hadsereg is tele volt szórva volt cári tisztekkel, akik vagy opportunizmusból, vagy félelemből csatlakoztak a kommunistákhoz – vagy pedig azért, mert hittek a Tanban.
Mert – akármilyen hihetetlen – bizony a nemesek között is akadtak, akik Leninékben látták az egyedüli erőt, aki képes megmenteni Szent Oroszország Anyácskát. A cárt ugyanis – mint mondtam – nemigen kívánták vissza, Kerenszkij furcsa, mutáns demokráciakezdeményét pedig gyenge tákolmánynak látták, Kerenszkijnek magának pedig sem határozott céljai nincsenek, sem pedig ereje ahhoz, hogy rendet tartson. Lehet, hogy a nagyvárosokat kontrollálja, de vidéken lángoltak a nemesi kúriák: dühös parasztok százezrei érezték úgy, hogy most jött el az ő ideje felkoncolni egykori gazdáikat (természetesen a közeli zsidó kocsmárossal együtt). Még csak kommunista agitátorokra se nagyon volt szükségük ehhez. Úgy festett, a bolsevikok legalább tudták, mit akarnak, bennük legalább megvan az erő, hogy a permanens káoszból kirángassák az országot. Csak milyen áron, ugye.
Különös látni, az arisztokrácia egy része milyen lassan vette észre, hogy itt nekik bizony nem lesz pardon. Hogy itt ők csak a társadalom szemete lehetnek, „deklasszált elemek”, akikre rá lehet fogni az ország újraformálódása során felmerülő összes problémát, és hogy előbb-utóbb valamennyien egy lágerben, vagy egy sötét börtönpincében végzik. Az ember csodálkozik, miért nem léptek le mind, miért nézték végig, ahogy elvesznek tőlük mindent, az egzisztencia és az önbecsülés utolsó morzsáit is. Egyrészt biztos szerették az országot, igen. Bíztak benne, hogy előbb-utóbb minden helyrerázódik. Dúl a radikalizmus, persze, emberek tűnnek el közülük, de majd megunják ott fenn, és lehet újra élni. Ha nem is a dácsán, de legalább valahol. Néha tényleg mintha felcsillant volna a remény. A NEP, a Lenin által bevezetett gazdasági rendszer valóban demokratizálódást ígért, egy olyan Oroszországot, ami nem a saját honfitársak iránt érzett gyűlöletből, hanem azok kreativitásából kíván táplálkozni. Ám kiderült, mindez csak porhintés. A NEP csak átmeneti enyhülést hozott, arra lett szánva, hogy a gazdaságot valahogy talpra állítsa – ahogy a kommunista urak úgy érezték, hogy a gyeplő túlzottan kicsúszik a kezükből, visszatértek a terrorhoz. Ami áll egyrészt 50% félelemből, hogy ha nem én ölök, akkor engem ölnek meg, és 50% gyűlöletből – mert ez a gyűlölet segíti az elkövetőt, hogy jogosnak láthassa mindazt, amit tesz, így továbbra is embernek tartsa magát. Pedig már megszűnt annak lenni.
Mert ez a rettenetes aspektus. Ez a hihetetlen, elképesztő gyűlölet, amit a bolsevikok mint furkósbotot tudtak felhasználni az arisztokrácia ellen, hogy laposra klopfolják őket. Itt ugyanis nem csak arról volt szó, hogy el akarták tüntetni az urakat. Hanem emberségükben is meg akarták semmisíteni őket. Azok a borzalmas, leírhatatlan halálnemek, a kínzások, a folytonos packázás és megalázás... hogy halmozódhatott fel ekkora harag a társadalomban? Bár lett volna annyi esze a cároknak, hogy hagynak egy szelepet, ahol a társadalom feszültsége távozhat – így viszont szétvetette az egész miskulanciát a gőz, összeragasztani se lehet már soha.
Ui.: Jó tanács a reménybeli olvasónak. Ne akadjatok meg azon, hogy a hatvanhetedik Golicin, akiről a négyszázötvenedik oldalon olvastok, azonos-e azzal a Golicinnel, akiről a száznyolcvankettedik oldalon szó esett. Engedjétek el, hogy a sok Vlagyimirt megkülönböztessétek egymástól. Nem szükséges azonosítani őket ahhoz, hogy az általuk megélt fájdalmat átérezhessük.
(A cári család 1913-ban. Amikor még minden szép és jó volt. Szerintük.)
Vannak persze nyilvánvaló okok, amiről már sokan sokat beszéltek, kár a szót vesztegetni rájuk. (Bár én mégis megteszem.) Az egyik ugye a háború, ami fegyvert adott a tömegek kezébe. A másik maga a háborús vereség, ami növelte a társadalom frusztrációját és kétségbeesését, no és persze világosan bebizonyította, hogy akik addig Oroszhon sorsát intézték, rosszul sáfárkodtak a felelősséggel, gyengék és megvetendőek. És köztük is a legmegvetendőbb maga a cár atyuska, Miklós, aki az egyetemes történelem egyik legAL-KAL-MAT-LANabb uralkodója. Mindent elmond róla, hogy amikor már az egész állam a káosz szakadékának szélén táncolt, ő még akkor is azt mantrázta, hogy nem neki kell visszaszereznie a nép bizalmát, hanem a népnek kell visszaszereznie az övét. Amiről egy Brecht idézet jut eszembe:
„A június 17-iki fölkelés után
az Írószövetség főtitkára
a Sztálin fasorban röplapokat osztatott szét,
melyek tudatták, hogy a nép
eljátszotta a kormány bizalmát
és csak kétszeres munkával
hódíthatja vissza. Nem volna ezúttal
egyszerűbb, ha a kormány
feloszlatná a népet
és újat választana?”
De vannak kevésbé nyilvánvaló okok is. Az egyik, hogy igazából Oroszországban nem beszélhetünk egységes nemességről – nemesekről beszélhetünk, akiknek érdekeik és ideológiájuk totálisan elütött. Közéjük tartozott a monarchista Seremetyev éppúgy, mint a liberális Golicin, de nemesnek mondhatta magát Nabokov is, vagy – hogy mást ne mondjak – maga Lenin. Ez a sokszínű társulat egy része nyilván felelős volt a jobbágyok elnyomásáért, a háborús vereségért, és a mérhetetlen szegénységért, ami megtörte az ország gerincét. Ugyanakkor ők voltak az orosz kult��ra hordozói is, közülük kerültek ki például a Tolsztojok – a próféta Lev éppúgy, mint a Sztálinnal kooperáló kollaboráns, Alekszej. Zömüknek eszébe se jutott kiállni a cár mellett, nekik is elegük volt a teszetosza uralkodóból, aki tévedhetetlenül csak azokhoz az ötleteihez ragaszkodott, amelyek utólag hülyeségnek bizonyultak. Persze a polgárháborúban jó részük a fehérekhez csatlakozott, de hát 1.) a fehéreknek sem voltak egységes nézeteik („üres volt a zászlójuk”, ahogy egy kortárs mondta volt), nagyjából az antiszemitizmus kötötte csak össze őket ideológiailag, más semmi 2.) a Vörös Hadsereg is tele volt szórva volt cári tisztekkel, akik vagy opportunizmusból, vagy félelemből csatlakoztak a kommunistákhoz – vagy pedig azért, mert hittek a Tanban.
Mert – akármilyen hihetetlen – bizony a nemesek között is akadtak, akik Leninékben látták az egyedüli erőt, aki képes megmenteni Szent Oroszország Anyácskát. A cárt ugyanis – mint mondtam – nemigen kívánták vissza, Kerenszkij furcsa, mutáns demokráciakezdeményét pedig gyenge tákolmánynak látták, Kerenszkijnek magának pedig sem határozott céljai nincsenek, sem pedig ereje ahhoz, hogy rendet tartson. Lehet, hogy a nagyvárosokat kontrollálja, de vidéken lángoltak a nemesi kúriák: dühös parasztok százezrei érezték úgy, hogy most jött el az ő ideje felkoncolni egykori gazdáikat (természetesen a közeli zsidó kocsmárossal együtt). Még csak kommunista agitátorokra se nagyon volt szükségük ehhez. Úgy festett, a bolsevikok legalább tudták, mit akarnak, bennük legalább megvan az erő, hogy a permanens káoszból kirángassák az országot. Csak milyen áron, ugye.
Különös látni, az arisztokrácia egy része milyen lassan vette észre, hogy itt nekik bizony nem lesz pardon. Hogy itt ők csak a társadalom szemete lehetnek, „deklasszált elemek”, akikre rá lehet fogni az ország újraformálódása során felmerülő összes problémát, és hogy előbb-utóbb valamennyien egy lágerben, vagy egy sötét börtönpincében végzik. Az ember csodálkozik, miért nem léptek le mind, miért nézték végig, ahogy elvesznek tőlük mindent, az egzisztencia és az önbecsülés utolsó morzsáit is. Egyrészt biztos szerették az országot, igen. Bíztak benne, hogy előbb-utóbb minden helyrerázódik. Dúl a radikalizmus, persze, emberek tűnnek el közülük, de majd megunják ott fenn, és lehet újra élni. Ha nem is a dácsán, de legalább valahol. Néha tényleg mintha felcsillant volna a remény. A NEP, a Lenin által bevezetett gazdasági rendszer valóban demokratizálódást ígért, egy olyan Oroszországot, ami nem a saját honfitársak iránt érzett gyűlöletből, hanem azok kreativitásából kíván táplálkozni. Ám kiderült, mindez csak porhintés. A NEP csak átmeneti enyhülést hozott, arra lett szánva, hogy a gazdaságot valahogy talpra állítsa – ahogy a kommunista urak úgy érezték, hogy a gyeplő túlzottan kicsúszik a kezükből, visszatértek a terrorhoz. Ami áll egyrészt 50% félelemből, hogy ha nem én ölök, akkor engem ölnek meg, és 50% gyűlöletből – mert ez a gyűlölet segíti az elkövetőt, hogy jogosnak láthassa mindazt, amit tesz, így továbbra is embernek tartsa magát. Pedig már megszűnt annak lenni.
Mert ez a rettenetes aspektus. Ez a hihetetlen, elképesztő gyűlölet, amit a bolsevikok mint furkósbotot tudtak felhasználni az arisztokrácia ellen, hogy laposra klopfolják őket. Itt ugyanis nem csak arról volt szó, hogy el akarták tüntetni az urakat. Hanem emberségükben is meg akarták semmisíteni őket. Azok a borzalmas, leírhatatlan halálnemek, a kínzások, a folytonos packázás és megalázás... hogy halmozódhatott fel ekkora harag a társadalomban? Bár lett volna annyi esze a cároknak, hogy hagynak egy szelepet, ahol a társadalom feszültsége távozhat – így viszont szétvetette az egész miskulanciát a gőz, összeragasztani se lehet már soha.
Ui.: Jó tanács a reménybeli olvasónak. Ne akadjatok meg azon, hogy a hatvanhetedik Golicin, akiről a négyszázötvenedik oldalon olvastok, azonos-e azzal a Golicinnel, akiről a száznyolcvankettedik oldalon szó esett. Engedjétek el, hogy a sok Vlagyimirt megkülönböztessétek egymástól. Nem szükséges azonosítani őket ahhoz, hogy az általuk megélt fájdalmat átérezhessük.
January 25, 2013
I confess when I first picked this up at the library, I was thinking it was going to be a Downton Abbey but with Russians kind of a book, and then it turned out to be a more serious history, with historical analysis and everything, so more of a dense read than I was expecting. But still awesome! And it will come in useful for at work when faculty ask me what I've read lately, because this doesn't seem as weird as saying The Black Stallion Returns which is usually what I've been reading.
It primarily looks at two prominent families, starting in the last years of the tsar and then covering the years of the revolution(s), Lenin, and through Stalin. As you might imagine (or maybe not, because I for one was imagining Downton Abbey with Russians, as I mentioned), things did not go well. The author does a great job of outlining the political and social upheavals they faced, and putting them in context alongside the sufferings of the peasants, the horrors inflicted upon the Jews, and the general dismal state of things for just about everyone else in Russia as well.
It's a tragic story, but also mesmerizing. And, as an added bonus, all the people and place names make you feel like you're reading Tolkien. We're fleeing the Tauride Palace and headed to Irkutsk, but avoiding the Ataman Semenov! I especially liked the accounts of families who fled east ahead of the Red Army, on the Trans Siberian Railroad. This is no doubt informed by my love of The Endless Steppe (hardship! living in boxcars!) and I feel like so many accounts from this era mention the beauty of Siberia, despite the fact of its being the site of exile. I dream of visiting Lake Baikal, which I just now read is the world's oldest lake. I don't even know how that is determined, but it makes the appeal even greater. The oldest lake in the world!
It primarily looks at two prominent families, starting in the last years of the tsar and then covering the years of the revolution(s), Lenin, and through Stalin. As you might imagine (or maybe not, because I for one was imagining Downton Abbey with Russians, as I mentioned), things did not go well. The author does a great job of outlining the political and social upheavals they faced, and putting them in context alongside the sufferings of the peasants, the horrors inflicted upon the Jews, and the general dismal state of things for just about everyone else in Russia as well.
It's a tragic story, but also mesmerizing. And, as an added bonus, all the people and place names make you feel like you're reading Tolkien. We're fleeing the Tauride Palace and headed to Irkutsk, but avoiding the Ataman Semenov! I especially liked the accounts of families who fled east ahead of the Red Army, on the Trans Siberian Railroad. This is no doubt informed by my love of The Endless Steppe (hardship! living in boxcars!) and I feel like so many accounts from this era mention the beauty of Siberia, despite the fact of its being the site of exile. I dream of visiting Lake Baikal, which I just now read is the world's oldest lake. I don't even know how that is determined, but it makes the appeal even greater. The oldest lake in the world!
February 13, 2020
Familiile Șeremetiev și Golitîn, ambele cu o istorie îndelungată, ambele foarte bogate și cu zeci de ramificații, se așteptau, la începutul secolului 20, la o transformare, la o schimbare a societății rusești, mai ales din cauza inabilității noului țar, Nicolae al II-lea. Numai că nu au prevăzut ceea ce a urmat: războiul mondial, revoluțiile din 1917, războiul civil și țelul comuniștilor - exterminarea cu orice preț a aristocrației, a urmașilor acestora, a tuturor ”foștilor”. Punând accentul pe aceste două familii, pe felul în care acestea au fost aproape în totalitate exterminate, Douglas Simth ne oferă o analiză foarte atentă și detaliată a lumii rusești din primii cincizeci de ani ai secolului trecut.
600 de pagini excelente de istorie.
600 de pagini excelente de istorie.
March 15, 2014
This book opens by telling us that "Russian nobles were one of the first groups subjected to a brand of political violence that became a hallmark of the past century" and the author uses the Sheremetev and Golitsyn families to illustrate the wide variety of experiences of the former nobility, ranging from execution, to exile in the U.S. as a successful businessman, to moving in and out of the gulags multiple times during the decades between 1917 and 1945. The most striking thing was the way the persecution could drag on for decades with resolution. Being released from prison one year was no guarantee you wouldn't be picked up as a part of some other purge later, or exiled to the other side of the country with no way of contacting family left behind. I did not expect to necessarily sympathize a great deal with the nobles, but the arbitrariness of their experiences, coupled with the fact that there was seemingly no way to rehabilitate yourself in the government's eyes (the taint of noble birth was permanent, even on those born after 1918), turned this into a story about rather ordinary people trying to work, keep families together, and save their children from starving.
The weakest point of the book is Smith's attempt to use the two families as representatives. First, I found it nearly impossible to tell a lot of the figures apart--and I'm someone who's made it through Tolstoy's novels. Too many people share the same name and the generations overlap too much. Obviously this is not something Smith could control, but he could have done more to help us remember who's who, like he does with "the mayor." Or, he could have just written about anyone he wanted, without confining himself to the two families, since readers can't keep track of them anyway. Second, I wonder if the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns were truly representative. One Princess Zenaida Yusupov crops up a few times, whinging about the "Jew-Masons" and how much luggage she was able to bring on her escape from the country. I would bet that there were other unsympathetic figures like her, and the book would be more balanced if it shared more of them. In his acknowledgments, the author thanks Sheremetev and Golitsyn descendants in the U.S., France, England, and Morocco as well as in Russia, so it is obvious that he comes at the topic with a certain point of view.
Like Ian Kershaw's Hitler biography, this probably isn't the right book to read first about this period (and for similar reasons, e.g. Petrograd transforms into Leningrad with no explanation). I still found it a worthwhile read on a topic I hadn't previously considered, in part because the subject was taboo in Russia, and the primary materials inaccessible, until relatively recently.
The weakest point of the book is Smith's attempt to use the two families as representatives. First, I found it nearly impossible to tell a lot of the figures apart--and I'm someone who's made it through Tolstoy's novels. Too many people share the same name and the generations overlap too much. Obviously this is not something Smith could control, but he could have done more to help us remember who's who, like he does with "the mayor." Or, he could have just written about anyone he wanted, without confining himself to the two families, since readers can't keep track of them anyway. Second, I wonder if the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns were truly representative. One Princess Zenaida Yusupov crops up a few times, whinging about the "Jew-Masons" and how much luggage she was able to bring on her escape from the country. I would bet that there were other unsympathetic figures like her, and the book would be more balanced if it shared more of them. In his acknowledgments, the author thanks Sheremetev and Golitsyn descendants in the U.S., France, England, and Morocco as well as in Russia, so it is obvious that he comes at the topic with a certain point of view.
Like Ian Kershaw's Hitler biography, this probably isn't the right book to read first about this period (and for similar reasons, e.g. Petrograd transforms into Leningrad with no explanation). I still found it a worthwhile read on a topic I hadn't previously considered, in part because the subject was taboo in Russia, and the primary materials inaccessible, until relatively recently.
June 17, 2017
Fascinating subject which was also well researched. The problem was the scope of information. Too much too handle. Smith gives us so many personal stories, but although this is important it`s hard to keep track of all the names and events.
And still, interesting, chilling and tragic account of the last days of Russian aristocracy.
And still, interesting, chilling and tragic account of the last days of Russian aristocracy.
December 20, 2012
Smith has written an interesting book which manages to both entertain and captivate the reader. I literally could not put it down. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in history, Russia or the Cold War. I am even planning on suggesting that the Russian history professor at my college incorporate the book into his course on the Cold War.
March 30, 2015
It's interesting to read a history of the Russian revolution that does not focus on the pre-Revolutionary excesses of the Russian nobility. Smith's view of the Russian peasantry who murdered two million "class enemies" in the years after the war is pretty grim - ignorant, angry, dirty, sadistic. He has almost nothing good to say about Lenin, who despite being born into a noble family himself, was very explicit about the need to use state power to murder "former people," those the Bolsheviks deemed guilty of having exploited the working class in the past - the wealthy, the middle class, the nobility, the intelligentsia, former state bureaucrats, in some places anyone who showed evidence of having bathed. And Smith makes it clear that the Bolsheviks were merely putting an official stamp on the anarchic class violence, looting, and rape that occurred almost immediately after Nicholas II's abdication.
Smith is particularly interesting when he shows the irony of how the liberalism and even radicalism of the upper classes in the years before the Revolution helped blind them to the worst excesses of the Terror until they, too, were caught in its maw. Many expected they would be welcomed in the "New Russia" by virtue of their having been "friends of the peasants" in the years before the revolution. They weren't, and it's a measure of their naivete that they seem shocked to discover that the peasants were violent, ignorant, greedy, and very, very angry. The last half of the book is a catalog of horrors.
I have a theory which I doubt is original to me, but has been creeping up on me since reading Bloodlands. The early 20th century sees a decisive movement away from religious belief in demons at almost exactly the same time it gives birth to political movements that shift the realm of the demonic away from the spirit world and into the political world. The relentless political violence of the 20th century, especially its first half, relies on the state's capacity to demonize some demographic on which the violent energies of the people can be unleashed: the Jews, the capitalists, Tutsi cockroaches, take your pick. If you don't mind killing lots of innocent people, it's an incredibly powerful way to unite disparate elements of society and to consolidate political power.
Smith is particularly interesting when he shows the irony of how the liberalism and even radicalism of the upper classes in the years before the Revolution helped blind them to the worst excesses of the Terror until they, too, were caught in its maw. Many expected they would be welcomed in the "New Russia" by virtue of their having been "friends of the peasants" in the years before the revolution. They weren't, and it's a measure of their naivete that they seem shocked to discover that the peasants were violent, ignorant, greedy, and very, very angry. The last half of the book is a catalog of horrors.
I have a theory which I doubt is original to me, but has been creeping up on me since reading Bloodlands. The early 20th century sees a decisive movement away from religious belief in demons at almost exactly the same time it gives birth to political movements that shift the realm of the demonic away from the spirit world and into the political world. The relentless political violence of the 20th century, especially its first half, relies on the state's capacity to demonize some demographic on which the violent energies of the people can be unleashed: the Jews, the capitalists, Tutsi cockroaches, take your pick. If you don't mind killing lots of innocent people, it's an incredibly powerful way to unite disparate elements of society and to consolidate political power.
November 22, 2012
You may say 'oh, this is a book about rich idle people who got what they deserved'. Or 'why should I care about what happened to a bunch of rich guys whose estates got burnt to the ground?' Well yes, these were rich people. Specifically, these were people from two branches of aristocracy, Sheremetev and Golitsyns -- two very powerful, very rich families. Yet the book is heartbreaking. You may think they got what was coming, but surely these people did not deserve the fate given to them by the Bolsheviks. Most of them were killed or exiled during the extremely chaotic and bloody years of early 20th-century Russia. The ones were who were not killed or exiled during that time were killed or exiled during Stalinist purges. This is a book about systematic eradication of an entire class of people and also of a way of life. It is honestly surprising that we still have the poetry of Pushkin or novels of Tolstoy, since the Communists seemed to be set on destruction of everything that had to do with nobility and what most of us associate with 'Russian culture'.
May 12, 2013
Haunting reconstruction of the chaotic and prolonged expropriation of stuff and crushing of the former Czarist aristocracy by the Bolsheviks. Using surviving documents, Soviet records and interviews with remaining family members in North America and Russia, Smith illuminates 1917-1935 through two families, the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns, as they attempt to navigate the new world of Revolutionary Russia. He gives enough background that you know why the peasants want to kill them and destroy houses down to the ground, but also the terrible fear as they shuttle around avoiding the Red Army and scrounging for food. Particularly striking is the insistence of the family patriarchs that keeping money outside the country was unpatriotic, as was leaving, even under threat of death (keeping up this idea even when up against a literal wall), and the creepy memory of many aristocratic children of playing "French Revolution" and knowing that their world was on the brink of implosion.
March 9, 2013
Information overload! I consider myself to be erudite and scholarly, but this was like reading someone's thesis. The book takes a truly fascinating subject and makes it dry. Although there were family trees in the front, it was difficult to keep track of the different family members and time periods as things skipped around making everything disorienting. The research was meticulous, but it was a difficult read, I was hoping for something that was accurate but told the overarching story of this group of people at this time and I don't think this did so successfully.
September 26, 2018
Печальное чтиво о том, как уничтожали лучших людей России.
December 16, 2012
The fate of the Romanovs after the revolution has been well covered but that of the other nobles has not. This book is the first that I know of to fill that gap. It profiles the Sheremetev and Golitsyn Families. Both had great wealth and for many generations were close to the tzars. Their fate helps to tell the story of early 20th century Russia.
The book begins with a list of family members, genealogy charts and some excellent maps. At first, I flipped back to these as I read, but given the many names and locations, I eventually stopped as the story became more important than which particular brother, sister, parent or cousin was being discussed.
The narrative shows how the post-revolutionary lives of nobles evolved from bad to worse. It began in the cities with seemingly arbitrary seizures and arrests. In the countryside, peasants who took the initiative could overwhelm the owners of the estates on which they worked. For a time, the families could move about, avoiding the hot spots; Having a Decembrist grandfather could be helpful. In the long run, there was no where to go and nothing could be said to help. Even Tolstoy's Polynaia was taken. With a few periods of respite (not improvement) the situation of the nobles deteriorated for over 50 years.
What is striking is the "noble" attitude of these nobles. None joined counter-revolutionary organizations. Very few fled the country. Perhaps their acceptance of this situation was a survival mechanism. Perhaps it can be explained by a forensic psychologist or profiler. Their attitudes differ from the artists and intellectuals who were also hunted down and forced to live a sub-human existence.
Another surprising thing was that while the country is literally starving, there is work to be had in the theater, in translating, teaching languages in building museum dioramas, etc. (You also see this in biographies of writers and artists of the time.) While this work is described as not paying a living wage, who is learning French? reading reading Dickens? visiting museums?
The story is larger than these individuals. It illustrates how the different twists and turns of events that effected 20% of the Russian population. Through all this chaos (it was hard to tell a government seizure from a looting) it's an achievement for anyone, particularly the "former people" to survive. A whole class was eliminated and an untold value of property destroyed.
Smith brings together a lot of information from Russian language materials and interview sources. It will be interesting to see, as more gets published, who other survivors might be and how they stayed alive.
Those with interest in this period will want to read this book. It is an aspect that, to my knowledge, has not been available to the general reader before.
The book begins with a list of family members, genealogy charts and some excellent maps. At first, I flipped back to these as I read, but given the many names and locations, I eventually stopped as the story became more important than which particular brother, sister, parent or cousin was being discussed.
The narrative shows how the post-revolutionary lives of nobles evolved from bad to worse. It began in the cities with seemingly arbitrary seizures and arrests. In the countryside, peasants who took the initiative could overwhelm the owners of the estates on which they worked. For a time, the families could move about, avoiding the hot spots; Having a Decembrist grandfather could be helpful. In the long run, there was no where to go and nothing could be said to help. Even Tolstoy's Polynaia was taken. With a few periods of respite (not improvement) the situation of the nobles deteriorated for over 50 years.
What is striking is the "noble" attitude of these nobles. None joined counter-revolutionary organizations. Very few fled the country. Perhaps their acceptance of this situation was a survival mechanism. Perhaps it can be explained by a forensic psychologist or profiler. Their attitudes differ from the artists and intellectuals who were also hunted down and forced to live a sub-human existence.
Another surprising thing was that while the country is literally starving, there is work to be had in the theater, in translating, teaching languages in building museum dioramas, etc. (You also see this in biographies of writers and artists of the time.) While this work is described as not paying a living wage, who is learning French? reading reading Dickens? visiting museums?
The story is larger than these individuals. It illustrates how the different twists and turns of events that effected 20% of the Russian population. Through all this chaos (it was hard to tell a government seizure from a looting) it's an achievement for anyone, particularly the "former people" to survive. A whole class was eliminated and an untold value of property destroyed.
Smith brings together a lot of information from Russian language materials and interview sources. It will be interesting to see, as more gets published, who other survivors might be and how they stayed alive.
Those with interest in this period will want to read this book. It is an aspect that, to my knowledge, has not been available to the general reader before.
December 29, 2012
Douglas Smith has written about the "former people" who lived in the Soviet Union from the founding of the USSR until Stalin's death. They were those who were aristocrats in tsarist times. This is a disturbing but fascinating book as it reveals the depth of the Bolsheviks' hatred toward these people. The equivalent of racism, there was nothing the former people could do to remove the stigma from themselves as it was only based on who their ancestors were. They could be model citizens and hard workers in the new world in which they found themselves, but it mattered not. Former people suffered waves of persecution in which they were declared ineligible for both jobs and housing. Entire families would return home from work at the end of days and find their names on a list of "Non-people" and their belongings out on the sidewalk. Smith specifically follows two families, the Golitsyns and the Sheremetevs. Some of them fled when Russia fell to the Red forces at the end of the civil war while others could not bear to leave the Motherland. Most of those who stayed died while those who left prospered. Interestingly, there are now more Golitsyns in the United States than there are in Russia. This is a truly fascinating and disturbing book that chronicles how evil man can act toward his fellow man.
June 14, 2017
I really enjoyed the book. The writer is entertaining and really brings the subject to life - but I want to make it clear that I had JUST finished a book on the Romanov dynasty when I started this, and I have at least a cursory knowledge of the Russian Revolution, so that probably helped a lot. People who are new to the topic of Russian history will probably be lost. I wasn't able to keep track of all of the names (there were lots and lots of Vladimirs) but I also didn't try, and the book worked just fine anyway. A really great piece of research.
November 16, 2012
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
By Douglas Smith. Revealing account of what happened to the Russian aristocracy in the Bolshevik Revolution. Read by Robert Powell.
By Douglas Smith. Revealing account of what happened to the Russian aristocracy in the Bolshevik Revolution. Read by Robert Powell.
January 27, 2013
This is a well written and interesting book which highlights an aspect of history that is not well known. I found it a difficult, but worthwhile, read.
For a book about "former people", the real eye opener was just how connected they remained even after their fall from power. A regular theme is how these ex nobles immediately start pulling favours from high ranking red officials as soon as something bad happens. Not always successfully, but with enough success to suggest that the relationship between the old and the new elite was significantly more nuanced than you would have expected. It is noticable that between bouts of repression, if the former people don't end up dead, they tend to end up landing on their feet in quite high status middle class jobs.
The book, as you would expect, goes into a lot of detail over how the nobles suffered during this period.
Unfortunately, a lot of this comes accross more as offended sensibilities than actual genuine suffering. The author regularly refers to a favourite pastime of the former people as being reading classic novels to each other, and he usually gives a list of author's names at this point. Sadly missing from these lists is Jane Austin. You do get the feeling that some of these people could have learrned something from reading Sense and Sensibility.
Sadly, the rest of the book reports genuinely terrible and tragic events where good people end up either dead, damaged or heartbroken. The communists one real talent appears to have been cruilty.
Whilst parts of this book make you feel that the ex nobles needed to be, figuratively, slapped down, you have to feel aghast when they are, literally, shot down.
Talleyrand once said, about the murder of a different noble by a different revolution, that it was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. You have to feel that the self inflicted decapitation of Russian society, the effects of which still can be seen today, that this book describes can be looked at in the same way. It is shocking to know that so many talented people were slaughtered to make a political point.
In summary this is a illuminating book which gives a surprising and very personal perspective on an important period in history. Well worth the read.
For a book about "former people", the real eye opener was just how connected they remained even after their fall from power. A regular theme is how these ex nobles immediately start pulling favours from high ranking red officials as soon as something bad happens. Not always successfully, but with enough success to suggest that the relationship between the old and the new elite was significantly more nuanced than you would have expected. It is noticable that between bouts of repression, if the former people don't end up dead, they tend to end up landing on their feet in quite high status middle class jobs.
The book, as you would expect, goes into a lot of detail over how the nobles suffered during this period.
Unfortunately, a lot of this comes accross more as offended sensibilities than actual genuine suffering. The author regularly refers to a favourite pastime of the former people as being reading classic novels to each other, and he usually gives a list of author's names at this point. Sadly missing from these lists is Jane Austin. You do get the feeling that some of these people could have learrned something from reading Sense and Sensibility.
Sadly, the rest of the book reports genuinely terrible and tragic events where good people end up either dead, damaged or heartbroken. The communists one real talent appears to have been cruilty.
Whilst parts of this book make you feel that the ex nobles needed to be, figuratively, slapped down, you have to feel aghast when they are, literally, shot down.
Talleyrand once said, about the murder of a different noble by a different revolution, that it was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. You have to feel that the self inflicted decapitation of Russian society, the effects of which still can be seen today, that this book describes can be looked at in the same way. It is shocking to know that so many talented people were slaughtered to make a political point.
In summary this is a illuminating book which gives a surprising and very personal perspective on an important period in history. Well worth the read.
March 6, 2014
BOTWLate 19th century. Russia races towards industrialisation, and the people want change.
blurb: From the last days of the monarchy to the Red Terror of the Bolshevik Revolution and then Stalin's 'Operation Former People', the hundreds of thousands of families who formed the Russian nobility were subjected to a series of bloodthirsty purges.
This disparate group of people ranged from the entrenched monarchists of the old tsarist regime to the impoverished rural nobility who struggled to make a living out of their lands.
Some of these nobles were in favour of change and supported the revolution but very few families escaped without at least one member experiencing imprisonment, exile, forced labour or execution. Palaces were looted and estates burned as the enemies of the new Soviet state were made to pay over and over for their centuries of glittering privilege.
Drawing on meticulous research including letters and diaries from the period Douglas Smith brings to life the tiny human details of this extraordinary and tumultuous time.
(beautifully) Read by Robert Powell
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nt1z0
Good enough for me to search out the book for the reference library.
3.5*
July 18, 2012
Hope you all like my new book! Is it bad to say I did?!
August 6, 2021
This is a unique and important look at what happened to the Russian aristocracy during and after the 1917 revolution, how its members were mercilessly pursued and eventually annihilated by the Soviet State. These accounts are heartbreaking, tragic, and shocking, but they are also filled with remarkable hope. It shows a people not only surviving but sometimes even succeeding and thriving despite being cut down over and over again. It is inspiring to read about such heroic individuals, especially told in an engaging, sympathetic, and knowing way by someone who, while not Russian himself, knows Russia, her people, and their tragic yet always unbreakable spirit and heart.
November 30, 2013
I remember being confused with Russia and the Soviet Union when I was still a very young student. Growing up during the last remnants of might of Communism and still unfamiliar with the legacy of tsarism, I thought at first that they were two different countries. It was only much later on that I understood that they were one and the same country separated only in history by an ideology that aggravated a massive sprout of hysteria, changing the political and social landscape of the country into the darkest period in their history, which for me, in terms of the magnitude can also be called as the Russian Holocaust.
Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy is an epic work of non-fiction, a lost history that retraces from the beginning the story of two of Russia's most prominent families of nobility, the Shremetevs and the Golitsyns, somehow consolidating through them the fate of the whole Russian nobility from the last days of tsarism to the reign of Great Terror during Stalin's regime.
In its hundreds of pages, the scope of the book is as extensive as the history it is trying to tell, generations of true to life characters are meticulously spread within its entirety, facing the most unimaginable form of uncertain existence instantly transformed by the Bolshevik's overthrow of the imperialist rule. It illuminates within its bounds through its documentary narrative the most heart wrenching human drama there is that appears as a somewhat precursor to the impending follies humans are about to commit in the next years of the 20th century.
Anna Saburov and her family circa 1900(click on the image for reference)
And among the many tragic stories incorporated in the book, about the millions of lives on the brink of extinction, it is the story of Anna Saburov, who stood out for me.
She was the elder daughter of Count Sergei Shremetev, who served during the reign of Tsar Alexander III, the father of Imperial Russia's last known tsar, Nicolas II, a woman showing great unfailing faith in God's plan despite all the odds against it, having lost her husband, Alik and her two sons, Boris and Yuri in the revolution, she never allowed it to waver her given strength. This had in fact enhanced it furthermore, making her in simile an inextinguishable torch of fire amid the dungeon of darkness taking over her country and the lives of her family and people in the gloomy depths of annihilation.
Her sense of a deeper understanding with which no words can truly expressed enabled her to see the radiating vision of light, a hidden beauty in God's inscrutable plan amid the destructive forces of an inevitable violence that crushed the very ideal of His sheer Existence, is in its own right, the true showmanship of nobility that no revolution can ever eradicate. ☾☯
Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy is an epic work of non-fiction, a lost history that retraces from the beginning the story of two of Russia's most prominent families of nobility, the Shremetevs and the Golitsyns, somehow consolidating through them the fate of the whole Russian nobility from the last days of tsarism to the reign of Great Terror during Stalin's regime.
In its hundreds of pages, the scope of the book is as extensive as the history it is trying to tell, generations of true to life characters are meticulously spread within its entirety, facing the most unimaginable form of uncertain existence instantly transformed by the Bolshevik's overthrow of the imperialist rule. It illuminates within its bounds through its documentary narrative the most heart wrenching human drama there is that appears as a somewhat precursor to the impending follies humans are about to commit in the next years of the 20th century.
Anna Saburov and her family circa 1900(click on the image for reference)
And among the many tragic stories incorporated in the book, about the millions of lives on the brink of extinction, it is the story of Anna Saburov, who stood out for me.
She was the elder daughter of Count Sergei Shremetev, who served during the reign of Tsar Alexander III, the father of Imperial Russia's last known tsar, Nicolas II, a woman showing great unfailing faith in God's plan despite all the odds against it, having lost her husband, Alik and her two sons, Boris and Yuri in the revolution, she never allowed it to waver her given strength. This had in fact enhanced it furthermore, making her in simile an inextinguishable torch of fire amid the dungeon of darkness taking over her country and the lives of her family and people in the gloomy depths of annihilation.
Her sense of a deeper understanding with which no words can truly expressed enabled her to see the radiating vision of light, a hidden beauty in God's inscrutable plan amid the destructive forces of an inevitable violence that crushed the very ideal of His sheer Existence, is in its own right, the true showmanship of nobility that no revolution can ever eradicate. ☾☯
November 16, 2014
How does an upstart regime strip members of an established elite of its humanity? Once the initial murders are committed, continue harassment through arbitrary arrests and debase the deposed class further by referring to any surviving members as “former” people. The Bolsheviks, who took power in Russia at the Revolution, treated the aristocracy this way. By following two aristocratic families, historian Douglas Smith shows that the Soviets may have wiped out the nobility as a class, but their attempt to crush the spirit of its members failed. We read with awe as former aristocrats face starvation and extreme hardship without complaint. It is faith that sustains them in concentration camps and prisons. Homes are stolen. Graves are desecrated. Children are denied education. Those still alive are sent to the Gulag. Mothers remain without news of their murdered sons for decades. The abuse that continued from 1917 through Stalin’s Great Terror is a shameful chapter in the history of Russia. Smith sets the record straight in his powerful new book Former People. I was very impressed by the author’s research and command of the material. The bibliography is seventeen pages long. Many of the sources are original documents, written in Russian. Smith reports that Eugene Lyons, Chief Correspondent for the United Press in 1928, “was stunned at the intensity” with which former people “‘were being pried out into the open and stepped on without pity.’” Lyons “could not conceive of how these people being thrown out of work and denied any means to make a living were to survive; what made it even worse was that to show any concern for these unfortunate souls was denounced as ‘bourgeois sentimentality.’” “Eighteen million inmates passed through the camps between 1929 and 1953. These inmates formed a nation of slave laborers without whose work Stalin’s plans never could have been realized.” To understand Putin’s Russia, read this book.
February 8, 2016
The premise - the untold story of the super elite - is an odd one; when you think about 'unheard voices' and 'untold stories', you don't generally think of Muscovite princes and Lithuanian royalty. One of my profs in undergrad joked that every other Russian emigre wrote a memoir on their revolution experiences and indeed Nabokov plays with the idea of the tedium of the tragic emigre story in A Russian Beauty. But, I suppose it's true that the majority of nonfiction works that discuss the effects of the revolution on a subset of people focus on the intelligentsia rather than 'ordinary' members of the elite. So this book does have a new perspective and some new stories to offer but somehow, it falls a bit flat. There are a lot of names to keep track of and though the family trees do help, flipping back to look at them every other page proves itself a pretty much futile chore. The stories are also very much what you'd (sadly) expect and only a few of the people discussed in the book stick out as really interesting personalities (which could be due to the author's broad-ish scope). It is well-written and researched though and not a bad read.
Unrelated point: bit disappointed with the discussion of the aristo's feelings pre-revolution. From the extracts quoted, it seems that their sense of the oncoming end was based solely on feeling echoes of the french revolution - there is no discussion of fin de siecle type anxieties, the spate of youth suicides in the late 1800s...
Unrelated point: bit disappointed with the discussion of the aristo's feelings pre-revolution. From the extracts quoted, it seems that their sense of the oncoming end was based solely on feeling echoes of the french revolution - there is no discussion of fin de siecle type anxieties, the spate of youth suicides in the late 1800s...
January 15, 2013
Douglas Smith offers an up-close view of the fate of two major Russian Aristocratic families -- the Golitsyns and Sheremetevs -- as well as many others related to them following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and through to the Stalin era and WWII. He carefully notes how the transition from privilege, luxury and political eminence within the Tsarist state came suddenly and with incredible brutality as the revolution swept across Russia. How these aristocrats managed to survive in an increasingly hostile world is intriguing and captured with much skill by the author. Some of the facts, names and circumstances will become confused as the reader plunges on through the book, but the characters and the courage with which some of them confronted terrible adversity will also inspire. This is not an easy or casual read. --- The trials and tribulations (financial and otherwise) faced by the aristocratic Crawley family in Downton Abbey may seem rather trivial beside the wholesale confiscations, arbitrary arrests and executions faced by these unfortunates of the Russian privileged classes whose previous comforts were borne by centuries of a much more brutally oppressive system.
November 6, 2015
(review written Nov 2015) I actually read this book a while ago, either early this year or late last year but in a period when I was away from Goodreads and I only remembered it now when looking for some other related books and Goodreads showing it
It's fairly long and not that easy a read as it follows various branches of a few Russian aristocratic families and their destinies after the revolution, so sometimes names/relations can be confusing
For someone who grew up under a communist regime the story wasn't that unfamiliar, though there a few surprises, mostly related in how accommodation was tried by many nobles as they misread the nature of the brutal regime coming to power
It's fairly long and not that easy a read as it follows various branches of a few Russian aristocratic families and their destinies after the revolution, so sometimes names/relations can be confusing
For someone who grew up under a communist regime the story wasn't that unfamiliar, though there a few surprises, mostly related in how accommodation was tried by many nobles as they misread the nature of the brutal regime coming to power
Displaying 1 - 30 of 239 reviews