{"id":7025,"date":"2016-12-23T06:34:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-23T06:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7025"},"modified":"2016-12-27T12:40:39","modified_gmt":"2016-12-27T12:40:39","slug":"caught-in-the-revolution-by-helen-rappaport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7025","title":{"rendered":"Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Hutchinson 25 August 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

448pp, hardback, \u00a325<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Jessica Mann<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 1917 the city once known as St Petersburg, later to be named Leningrad, was called Petrograd.\u00a0 It was the home, temporary or permanent, of a large number of foreigners many of whom kept records of what was happening in diaries and letters. Helen Rappaport has unearthed numerous \u00a0contemporary accounts of that dramatic year and tells its story with lavish quotations from eye-witnesses, ranging from\u00a0 the seven \u00a0year old Isaiah Berlin to the American Ambassador\u2019s valet,\u00a0 a semi-literate black man from the deep South; from an American woman journalist to the imposing grande dame\u00a0 who was the British\u00a0 Ambassador\u2019s wife. This is scrupulously researched history, liberally scattered with quotations and written in an easy, elegant style that would carry the reader along even if the story were less exciting.<\/p>\n

After three years of war, at the beginning of 1917 Petrograd was overflowing with refugees from the fighting on the Eastern Front. Food had become a serious problem. For most people it was so dreadfully scarce that wherever there was a shop, there was a long, silent queue of miserable women. But at the beginning\u00a0 of the year there was still plenty to eat, to smoke or to drink \u00a0for privileged foreigners, \u00a0even if it meant their having one maid whose\u00a0 only task \u00a0was to stand in queues for milk or bread.<\/p>\n

It was on February 23rd<\/sup> \u2013 International Women\u2019s Day \u2013 that the working women of Petrograd, about 90,000 by the afternoon, downed tools and joined together to march in protest against bread shortages. The next day huge crowds gathered and marched, on the 25th<\/sup> a general strike was in operation, by 27th<\/sup> the army\u00a0 had begun to mutiny. Rappaport allows a chapter a day for this part of the story. It is exciting even though readers know the outcome, and sad, because they do.\u00a0 There might have been a moment when the hopes for a new beginning for Russia could have been realized. Instead, within a few months foreigners had become well aware that they \u2018were all sitting on a bomb just waiting for someone to touch a match to it.\u2019 Life had become very cheap, and people who had led highly protected lives were confronted with atrocities. In the unlikely surroundings of a weekly sewing circle in the British Embassy, ladies capped each other\u2019s horror stories.\u00a0 They had seen decapitated bodies, people burnt alive, bodies hacked to pieces. It had become risky to go out in respectable clothes, so English and American ladies shaved the fur from their coat collars and scoured shops for threadbare dresses.<\/p>\n

By the end of the year many of the expatriates had gone home. The British Embassy was left with a skeleton staff of \u2018last-ditchers\u2019 who were supposed to look after the several hundred British subjects (mostly women, many of them governesses) who were still there. Those who remained were reluctant witnesses to barbarity. \u2018I cannot tell you all the brutalities, the fierce excesses, that are ravaging Russia end to end, and more ruthlessly than any invading army\u2026robbery, plunder and the cruellest forms of murder are grown a\u00a0 part of the very atmosphere we live in.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018A whole world has gone topsy turvy\u201d said an American diplomat.<\/p>\n

To make of this sad story – a (or perhaps the)<\/em> twentieth-century tragedy – and to make of an academic work, full of foot notes and references ,\u00a0 a book too fascinating to put down unfinished is a major achievement. Helen Rappaport should win prizes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*A 2016 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Jessica Mann<\/p>\n

It was on February 23rd, 1917 \u2013 International Women\u2019s Day \u2013 that the working women of Petrograd, about 90,000 of them by the afternoon, downed tools and joined together to march in protest against bread shortages. The next day huge crowds gathered and marched, on the 25th a general strike was in operation, by 27th the army had begun to mutiny. Rappaport allows a chapter a day for this part of the story. It is exciting even though readers know the outcome, and sad, because they do […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7025"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7049,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions\/7049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}