HELEN RAPPAPORT
CAUGHT IN THE REVOLUTION
Petrograd, Russia, 1917—
A World on the Edge
St. Martin’s Press
New York
CAUGHT IN THE REVOLUTION. Copyright © 2016 by Helen Rappaport. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rappaport, Helen, author.
Title: Caught in the revolution : Petrograd, Russia, 1917—a world on the edge / Helen Rappaport.
Description: First U.S. edition. | New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016043110| ISBN 9781250056641 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781466860452 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Saint Petersburg (Russia)—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Social aspects. | Saint Petersburg (Russia)—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Personal narratives. | Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Social aspects. | Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Personal narratives. | Saint Petersburg (Russia)—History, Military—20th century. | Visitors, Foreign—Russia (Federation)—Saint Petersburg—Biography. | Saint Petersburg (Russia)—Biography. | War and society—Russia (Federation)—Saint Petersburg—History—20th century. | Saint Petersburg (Russia)—Social conditions—20th century. | BISAC: HISTORY / Europe Russia & the Former Soviet Union. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Historical.
Classification: LCC DK265.8.L4 R37 2017 | DDC 355.00947/210904—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043110
eISBN 978-1-46686045-2
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First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson, a Penguin Random House company
First U.S. Edition: February 2017
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
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
Photographs
Also by Helen Rappaport
About the Author
Copyright
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 the 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)