Caught in the Revolution

by Helen Rappaport

2 ‘No Place for an Innocent Boy from Kansas’

  1. Thompson, 33.

  2. Ibid., 37; Harper, 24.

  3. Paléologue, 796.

  4. Ibid., 797.

  5. British embassy counsellor Francis Lindley noted in his memoirs that a report on the mission prepared for the British Foreign Office, and far more optimistic in tone than those sent from the embassy, had only just been printed and reached the FO when the revolution broke. It had to be hastily retrieved and suppressed. Lindley, untitled memoirs, 28.

  6. Paléologue, 808.

  7. Weather statistics for 1917 in Russia show that the average temperature was -13.44 Centigrade and that the significant rise in temperature so often given (e.g. Figes, People’s Tragedy, 308, and Pipes, Russian Revolution, 274) as occurring on Friday 24th did not in fact happen until Monday 27th, when the temperature finally rose above zero, to 0.03 degrees C. It was not until 13 March that it finally climbed well above zero and reached 8 degrees C. For a detailed discussion, see: Ezhenedelnik statisticheskogo otdeleniya petrogradskoy gorodskoy upravy, 1917, no. 5, p. 13.

  8. Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 104; Fleurot, 118; Wright, 42.

  9. Thompson, 39.

  10. Fleurot, 118; Gordon, Russian Year, 97.

  11. Thompson, 41.

  12. Ibid., 43.

  13. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 217; Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, ‘Women’s Suffrage and Revolution in the Russian Empire 1905–1917’, Aspasia, 1, 2007, 18; Thompson, 43.

  14. Harper, 26.

  15. Ibid., 27.

  16. Thompson, 43; Harper, 27.

  17. Thompson, 44.

  18. Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow, 337.

  19. Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 105.

  20. Thompson, 44; May Pearse, diary, 24 February 1917.

  21. Thompson, 46–7.

  22. Rivet, Last of the Romanofs, 171; Hart-Davis, Hugh Walpole, 159; Pocock MS diary, n.p.

  23. Wright, 43. Figes, People’s Tragedy, 308.

  24. Ransome, despatch 48, 23/24 February 1917.

  25. Thompson, 47.

  26. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 224–5; Bury, ‘Report Regarding the Russian Revolution’, IV; Fleurot, ‘In Petrograd during the Seven Days’, 258. Fleurot, 118.

  27. See Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow, 336–7. The poor quality of the northern capital’s water precluded top-quality baking in the vicinity of the Winter Palace and necessitated daily rail deliveries from Filippov’s bakeries in Moscow. See: http://voiceofrussia.com/radio_broadcast/2248959/18406508/

  28. Anon., ‘The Nine Days’, 213, 214. It has, sadly, proved impossible to ascertain who wrote this article, but the author talks of working in the Singer Building, so it was probably a member of staff at the US consulate, or possibly an employee of Westinghouse, which was also based there.

  29. Thompson, 48.

  30. Gordon, Russian Year, 97.

  31. Ransome, Despatches 49 and 48; Golder, War, Revolution and Peace in Russia, 34.

  32. The Tsaritsa punctiliously recorded the temperature in her diary each day. Throughout the whole of February she records it as ranging from -19 degrees Centigrade on 5 February to -4.5 on the 24th. See e.g. V. A. Kozlov and V. M. Khrustalev, eds, The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra, London: Yale University Press, 1997.

  33. Anon., ‘The Nine Days’, 213.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Golder, War, Revolution and Peace in Russia, 334.

  36. Fleurot, ‘Seven Days’, 258.

  37. Robien, 8.

  38. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 233.

  39. Ibid., 235.

  40. Robien, 8; Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 55.

  41. Hasegawa says 36,800, see February Revolution, 238.

  42. Markovitch, La Révolution russe, 17.

  43. Bury, ‘Report Regarding the Russian Revolution’, V.

  44. Heald, 50; ‘From Our Own Correspondent [Robert Wilton], “The Outbreak of the Revolution”’, The Times, 21 [8] March 1917.

  45. Hall, One Man’s War, 267, 263.

  46. Hegan, ‘Russian Revolution from a Window’, 556.

  47. Harmer, Forgotten Hospital, 119; Poutiatine, War and Revolution, 45–6.

  48. Dorothy Cotton, letter, 4 March 1917, Library Archives of Canada; Blunt, Lady Muriel, 104.

  49. Thompson, 50.

  50. Patouillet, 1:55.

  51. Grey, ‘Sidelights on the Russian Revolution’, 363.

  52. Harper, 29; Thompson, 49.

  53. Harper, 28–9.

  54. Stinton Jones, 62.

  55. Fleurot, 123.

  56. [Wilton], ‘Russian Food problem’, The Times, 9 March 1917; [Wilton], ‘The Outbreak of the Revolution, The Times, 21 March 1917.

  57. Heald, 50.

  58. Rogers, 3:7, 43–4.

  59. Thompson, 51.

  60. Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 55.

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

  1. Patouillet, 1:56.

  2. Rogers, 3:7, 44.

  3. Rogers, 3:7, 45–6; see also the account by Swinnerton, ‘Letter from Petrograd’, 2, which had been wrongly dated as 12 March OS, instead of 14 March OS.

  4. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 248; Wright, 43.

  5. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 249.

  6. Ibid., 251; Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow, 342.

  7. Markovitch, La Révolution russe, 19; Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow, 342.

  8. Anet, 12.

  9. Rogers, ‘Account of the March Revolution’, 7.

  10. Thompson, 53.

  11. Gordon, Russian Year, 103.

  12. Thompson, 54, 57; Harper, 29–30.

  13. Harper, 31.

  14. Thompson, 58, Harper, 31.

  15. Patouillet, 1:60; Anon., ‘Nine Days’, 214; Thompson, 58.

  16. Harper, 32, 33.

  17. Rogers, 3:7, 46.

  18. Reinke, ‘My Experiences in the Russian Revolution’, 9.

  19. Anet, 13.

  20. Thompson, 59; Rogers, 3:7, 46.

  21. Rogers, ‘Account of the Russian Revolution’, 8–9; Rogers, 3:7, 46; see also Stopford, 102.

  22. Hegan, ‘Russian Revolution from a Window’, 556.

  23. Fleurot, 122; Thompson, 60–1.

  24. Stopford, 103. A document in The National Archives, KV2/2398, reveals the details of Stopford’s original trip to Russia in 1916 and implies that he did some unofficial spying/snooping for Buchanan. In Russia he was well acquainted with the bisexual Felix Yusupov (the NA document alludes to Stopford’s homosexuality in a veiled comment about him being ‘a moral eccentric’). Stopford also had considerable experience in buying artworks from Fabergé for Cartier in Paris. In July 1917 he managed to get into Grand Duchess Vladimir’s palace unseen, rescue the best of her jewels from the safe and get them safely out of Russia; of these, her tiara was eventually bought by King George V and is still worn by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1918 Stopford was prosecuted for homosexual offences and jailed for a year in Wormwood Scrubs, after which he settled in Paris. For further details on his life – much of which remains sketchy – see Clarke, Hidden Treasures of the Romanovs.

  25. Thompson, 60–1.

  26. Some later accounts of the February Revolution deny the presence of machine guns, but far too many eyewitnesses testify to their presence on rooftops. See, for example, John Pollock’s account, ‘The Russian Revolution’, written from first-hand experience, which claims that Protopopov ‘had the roofs at every important street corner garrisoned by police with machine-guns’ and goes on to observe that the revolution had succeeded thanks to this misjudgement: ‘Had they been properly posted in the streets at strategic points and a sound scheme of cooperation arranged among the police and gendarmes, some fifty thousand in strength, they could have swept every living thing from the streets: placed in dormer windows and behind parapets, the mitrailleuses were extremely difficult to train on their objective’; 1070–1. Sir George Bury’s ‘Report’ also contains numerous references to the deploym
ent of machine guns.

  27. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 252; Gordon, Russian Year, 101, 102.

  28. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 263; Pipes, Russian Revolution, 276; Joseph Fuhrman, ed., The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999, 692.

  29. Thompson, 62.

  30. Pax, Journal d’une comédienne française, 11–12.

  31. Ransome, Despatch 50, 25 February, 11.00 p.m.

  32. Reinke, ‘My Experiences in the Russian Revolution’, 9.

  33. Butler Wright’s report to Francis, 10/23 March 1917, is included in Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 113.

  34. Thompson, 63.

  35. Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 22–3.

  36. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 265.

  37. Ibid., 267.

  38. Gordon, Russian Year, 105.

  39. Thompson, 64.

  40. See Patouillet, 1:59–60.

  41. Keeling, Bolshevism: Mr Keeling’s Five Years in Russia, 76.

  42. Harper, 37; Patouillet, 1:162.

  43. Anon., The Nine Days’, 215.

  44. Whether Thompson was actually able to grab any successful shots of the street fighting seems unlikely, as none were included in his collection of photographs of the revolution published as Blood-Stained Russia in 1918. He did manage to catch some static shots of bodies in morgues and of the funerals of the victims, but his major photographic coup came in May/June with his extensive coverage of Emmeline Pankhurst’s visits to Maria Bochkareva and the Women’s Death Battalion, which was widely reproduced in the Western press.

  45. Thompson, 64, 67; Harper, 37–8.

  46. Harper, 39–40; Thompson, 69–70.

  47. Dorothy Cotton, letter of 4 March OS – though within the letter she reverts to NS; Grey, ‘Sidelights on the Russian Revolution’, 363; Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 109, which claims that 100 people were killed during this incident alone.

  48. Poutiatine, War and Revolution, 47–8; Hegan, ‘Russian Revolution from a Window’, 557.

  49. Hegan, ‘Russian Revolution from a Window’, 558.

  50. Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 24.

  51. Hegan, ‘Russian Revolution from a Window’, 558.

  52. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 268; Grey, ‘Sidelights on the Russian Revolution’, 364; Anet, 16.

  53. ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ – Robert Wilton’s report for The Times, 16 March (NS) – his first major despatch to get through and be published in the UK; see also Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 110.

  54. Clare, ‘Eye witness of the Revolution’, n.p.

  55. Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 110; Markovitch, La Révolution russe, 24; Anon., ‘The Nine Days’, 215; Hasegawa, February Revolution, 268–9.

  56. Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 24.

  57. Swinnerton, ‘Letter from Petrograd’, 3.

  58. Ransome, Despatch 52.

  59. Harper, 41–2.

  60. Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 109; see also Wilton’s report in The Times, 16 March 1917.

  61. Wilton in The Times, 16 March 1917; Lady Georgina Buchanan, ‘From the Petrograd Embassy’, 19.

  62. Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 109.

  63. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 272–3.

  64. Pax, Journal d’une comédienne française, 16–18.

  65. Fleurot, 124–5; Arbenina, Through Terror to Freedom, 34.

  66. Anet, 11; Stopford, 108.

  67. Paléologue, 811; Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 57. In an uncanny parallel with Petrograd 1917, a demonstration by Frenchwomen on that same date in 1789, over the high price of bread and escalating hunger in Paris, had led to a mass march on the palace at Versailles.

  68. Arbenina, Through Terror to Freedom, 34–5; Anet, 15.

  69. Armour, ‘Recollections’, 5.

  70. Rogers, ‘Account of the March Revolution’, 11; Anet, 11; Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 57.

  71. Marcosson, Rebirth of Russia, 47–9; Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 112; Hasegawa, February Revolution, 275.

  72. Thompson, 72, 73.

  4 ‘A Revolution Carried on by Chance’

  1. Rogers 3:7, 48.

  2. Swinnerton, ‘Letter from Petrograd’, 4; Rogers 3:7, 46–7.

  3. For descriptions of the bank, see Fuller, ‘Journal of John L. H. Fuller’, 9–10, and letter to his brother of 19 [6] September, in Fuller, ‘Letters and Diaries’, 20.

  4. Rogers, 3:7, 46–7.

  5. Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 89.

  6. Marcosson, ‘The Seven Days’, 262.

  7. Petrograd, 96.

  8. Ibid., 97; Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 24.

  9. Butler Wright report, in Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 115.

  10. Mission, 63; Paléologue, 814–15.

  11. Paléologue, 816.

  12. Fleurot, ‘In Petrograd during the Seven Days’, 260; Fleurot, 126; see also Hasegawa, February Revolution, 278–81.

  13. Paléologue, 813.

  14. Marcosson, Rebirth of Russia, 52.

  15. Thompson, 78.

  16. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 286.

  17. Marcosson, ‘The Seven Days’, 35; Marcosson, Rebirth of Russia, 52; Hart-Davis, Hugh Walpole, 458.

  18. Knox, With the Russian Army, 553–4; as Sir George Buchanan observed in a ciphered telegram to the Foreign Office: ‘The danger is that men have no proper leaders. I saw about 3000 to-day with only single young officer’. FO report, 12/27 March, 299, The National Archives.

  19. Knox, With the Russian Army, 554–5; Stinton Jones, 107–8.

  20. Stinton Jones, 108–9.

  21. Gordon, Russian Year, 110; Anet, 23.

  22. Thompson, 81.

  23. Anet, 19–20.

  24. Thompson, 81–2.

  25. Paléologue, 814; Gordon, Russian Year, 110; Robien, 12.

  26. Anet, 22; Butler Wright report to Francis in Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 114–15.

  27. Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 24.

  28. Hart-Davis, Hugh Walpole, 454.

  29. Stinton Jones, 120.

  30. Reinke, ‘My Experiences in the Russian Revolution’, 11; Gordon, Russian Year, 109.

  31. Hegan, ‘Russian Revolution from a Hospital Window’, 558–9.

  32. Fleurot, 130.

  33. Stinton Jones, 131.

  34. See Poutiatine, War and Revolution, 50–1; Marcosson, Rebirth of Russia, 56; Fleurot, ‘In Petrograd during the Seven Days’, 262.

  35. Knox, With the Russian Army, 554–5; see also Stinton Jones, 107–8.

  36. Gibson, Wild Career, 127.

  37. Vecchi, Tavern is My Drum, 122; Stinton Jones, 110.

  38. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 287; Keeling, Bolshevism, 86, 85.

  39. Lombard, ‘Things I Can’t Forget’, 92, 90; Stinton Jones, 144.

  40. Farson, Way of a Transgressor, 187.

  41. Stinton Jones, ‘Czar Looked Over My Shoulder’, 97; Gibson, Wild Career, 135.

  42.Fleurot, ‘In Petrograd during the Seven Days’, 261.

  43. Springfield, ‘Recollections of Russia’, n.p.

  44. Lindley, untitled memoirs, 29.

  45. Pearse, diary, 27 February/12 March; Swinnerton, ‘Letter from Petrograd’, 4.

  46. Stinton Jones, 134, 132–3.

  47. Seymour, MS diary for 12 March [27 February].

  48. Lombard, ‘Things I Can’t Forget’, 92–3.

  49. Seymour, MS diary for 12 March [27 February]; Hegan, ‘Russian Revolution from a Hospital Window’, 558.

  50. According to Poutiatine, War and Revolution, 55, it turned out that machine guns had been firing on the street from a window of the house next door to the ARH on the Fontanka side, and there were two more firing ‘from the attic of a tall house on Nevskii, diagonally across from us’.

  51. Sybil Grey diary, quoted in Blunt, Lady Muriel, 104.

  52. Cotton, letter of 4 March, 3; Seymour, quoted in Wood, ‘Revolution Outside her Window’, 80
; see also Pocock, MS diary for Monday 27 February.

  53. Pax, Journal d’une comédienne française, 18–23.

  54. Marcosson, Rebirth of Russia, 56.

  55. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 296; Stinton Jones, 153.

  56. Walpole, Secret City, 255.

  57. See Keeling, Bolshevism, 82, 85; Stinton Jones, 124–5, 164; Marcosson, Rebirth of Russia, 35, 54; Hart-Davis, Hugh Walpole, 460.

  58. Anet, 23; Pollock, ‘The Russian Revolution’, 158.

  59. Metcalf, On Britain’s Business, 47.

  60. Stinton Jones, ‘Czar Looked Over my Shoulder’, 97; Clare, ‘Eye Witness of the Russian Revolution’.

  61.Dissolution, 166.

  62. Quoted in Sandra Martin and Roger Hall (eds), Where Were You? Memorable Events of the Twentieth Century, Toronto: Methuen, 1981, 220.

  63. Walpole, ‘Official Account of the First Russian Revolution’, 460; Stinton Jones, 142.

  64. Fleurot, 128.

  65.Ibid.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Fleurot, ‘In Petrograd during the Seven Days’, 262; Marcosson, Rebirth of Russia, 60.

  68. Fleurot, 128–9.

  69. Vecchi, Tavern is My Drum, 125; see also Stinton Jones, 150–1.

  70. Anon., ‘The Nine Days’, 215.

  71. See his report in Francis, 60–2.

  72. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 292–3; Vecchi, Tavern is My Drum, 124; Wilton, Russia’s Agony, 122–3.

  73. Stinton Jones, 140–1.

  74. Bert Hall, One Man’s War, 269–70.

  75. Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 26.

  76. Ibid.

  77. Swinnerton, ‘Letter from Petrograd’, 4, 5.

  78. Locker Lampson, ‘Report on the Russian Revolution’, 240, Kettle, Allies and the Russian Collapse, 14.

  79. Gibson, Wild Career, 129; Knox, With the Russian Army, 560.

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

  1. Bury, ‘Report’, XIII.

  2. Dissolution, 168.

  3. Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 26–7.

  4. Dearing, unpublished memoirs, 242; Dissolution, 167.

  5. Dissolution, 170.

  6. Swinnerton, ‘Letter from Petrograd’, 7.

  7. Paléologue, 819.

  8. Dissolution, 169–70; Mission, 66.

  9. North Winship telegram to the American Secretary of State, 20 [3] March 1917; https://history.hanover.edu/texts/tel2.html