Volga River, 162, 193
Volga-Kama Bank, 61–2
Vologda, Russia, 325–6
Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), 33–5, 67, 74, 328
Volynsky Regiment, 76, 81, 85–6, 90, 91
Voznesenskaya, Petrograd, 16
Vulture, HMS, 246
Vyborg Side, Petrograd, 2, 21–2, 43, 47, 49, 53, 54, 60, 70, 85, 86, 92, 98, 104, 158, 162, 172, 209, 220, 275, 279
W
Walpole, Hugh, 78, 122, 125, 155, 157, 252
Warsaw Station, Petrograd, 31, 199
Westinghouse, 8, 90, 157
‘What Is to Be Done?’ (Lenin), 161
Whiffen, Walter, 29
Whipple, George Chandler, 233, 234–6
whisky, 13, 15, 44, 113, 190, 299
Wightman, Orrin Sage, 10, 233–4, 236
William Miller & Co., 2
Williams, Harold, 29, 145, 182, 213–16, 224, 262, 264, 330
Wilson, Henry, 42
Wilson, Woodrow, 9, 167, 190, 191
Wilton, Robert, 29, 51, 55, 58, 75–6, 77–8, 112, 122, 192, 264
wine, 15, 17, 113–14, 116, 119, 127, 299, 310–13
Wine of Fury (Rogers), 334
Winship, North, 108, 177
Winter Palace, Petrograd, 5, 35, 63, 86, 102, 141–2, 153, 172–3, 190, 219, 220, 227–8, 267, 272–3, 282–3, 286–90, 291, 296, 310–11, 313, 315, 320
Winter Palace Bridge, Petrograd, 219, 279
Wiseman, William, 251, 252, 272
With the Russians at the Front, 333
Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World), 253
Wolff’s bookshop, Petrograd, 2
Women’s Battalion, 278, 282, 292, 293–4
Women’s Day, 49–53
Women’s Death Battalion, 193–201, 202, 233, 282
women’s rights, 127, 182–3, 187–90, 191–202, 237, 249, 253
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), 183, 187, 188
wood-burning, 236
Woodhouse, Arthur, 37, 245–6, 274, 302–3, 325
Woodhouse, Ella, 37, 119, 247–8, 302, 307
workers’ rights, 146–8, 246
World War I (1914–18), 1–2, 3, 5, 8, 20, 27, 29, 30–43, 47, 69, 131, 137, 139–40, 146, 150, 151, 160, 164, 167, 174–7, 180, 182, 187–8, 193–201, 206, 209, 220, 230, 238, 240, 246, 248, 253, 260, 261–2, 282, 295, 308, 309, 314, 321, 323, 324, 325, 329, 332
1914 Battle of Mons, 29
1916 Battle of Verdun, 27, 29; Battle of the Somme, 29
1917 Germany issues torpedo warning to neutral ships, 30; Allied conference in Petrograd, 40–3; Russian Baltic fleet mutiny at Kronstadt, 140, 207; US declares war on Germany, 167, 174; Milyukov’s Note; protests erupt in Russia, 174–7; formation of Petrograd Women’s Death Battalion, 194–201; Battle of Smorgon, 200; Kerensky Offensive, 206, 209; German capture of Tarnopol, 230; German capture of Riga, 238, 240; Brest-Litovsk conference begins, 314
1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 309, 314, 325
World War II (1939–45), 329
World, 27, 213
Wright, J. Butler, 18, 38–40, 44, 45, 48, 51, 70, 119, 150, 160, 167–8, 169–70, 176, 205, 234, 242, 245, 266, 302, 304
Y
Yakutsk, Siberia, 193
Yeliseev’s emporium, Petrograd, 312
YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), 8, 109, 162, 172, 191, 236
Yusupov, Felix, 20, 33, 37, 201, 212
Z
zakuski, 40
Zeppelins, 20, 261, 268
Zetkin, Clara, 49
Zhivoe slovo, 222
Zinoviev, Grigory, 275
Znamensky Square, Petrograd, 63, 64, 75–6, 77, 93
1. The Nevsky Prospekt in Petrograd, c. 1910.
2. A sewing party at the British Embassy in Petrograd organized by Lady Georgina Buchanan, who stands at the head of the table.
3. Sir George Buchanan, pictured in 1912.
4. Maurice Paléologue, the French Ambassador to Russia, c. 1914.
5. Sir George Buchanan and family dining with staff at the British Embassy in Petrograd.
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.
7. Francis with counsellor J. Butler Wright, being chauffeured in Petrograd by Phil Jordan in the US Embassy’s Model T Ford.
8. Leighton Rogers, a young American clerk at the National City Bank of New York in Petrograd.
9. Julia Cantacuzène-Speransky, granddaughter of US President Ulysses S. Grant, American wife of a Russian prince, and subsequendy a memoirist of the Russian Revolution.
10. The intrepid war photographer and cinematographer Donald C.Thompson.
11. James Negley Farson, American journalist and adventurer.
12. Arthur Ransome, correspondent for the Daily News at the time of the Revolution.
13. Journalist Florence Harper, pictured while working as a nurse at an American Field Hospital in Ukraine during 1917.
14. A bread line in Petrograd in 1917.
15. Nursing sisters and a wounded young soldier at the Anglo-Russian Hospital.
16. The International Women’s Day parade in Petrograd, 23 February 1917, that sparked a wave of popular protest at bread shortages.
17. Donald C.Thompson’s picture shows how the February Revolution claimed fatal casualties faster than the morgues could cope with.
18. Revolutionary barricades on Liteiny Prospekt, March 1917.
19. Cossack troops on patrol in Petrograd.
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.
21. The toppling of imperial monuments, 27 February 1917.
22. Shop-front Imperial emblems thrown onto the ice under a bridge across the Fontanka Canal.
23. Nurses with a wounded soldier at the Anglo Russian Hospital, observing events on the Nevsky Prospekt below.
24. An artist’s rendering of the attack on the Hotel Astoria, 28 February 1917.
25. The lobby of the Astoria after the attack, its floor bloodstained, a revolutionary sentry on guard.
26. Official buildings of the old tsarist regime, the first institutions to be attacked during the February Revolution: The District Court...
27. ...The Litovsky Prison
28. ...and Police Station No.4.
29. A burnt fragment of a secret police record picked up on the street by American bank clerk Leighton Rogers.
30. Soldiers digging the mass grave for the victims of the February Revolution at the Field of Mars.
31. The funeral procession for the dead of February.
32. A crowded session of the Petrograd Soviet in the Tauride Palace.
33. Romanov coats of arms are burned in Petrograd, May 1917.
34. Troops of the Petrograd Women’s Death Battalion.
35. Commander of the Women’s Death Battalion Maria Bochkareva with Emmeline Pankhurst, their mutual regard clear.
36. Jessie Kenney, suffragette and former mill worker who accompanied Emmeline Pankhurst to Russia.
37. The Daily Mirror front page reports the July Days violence in Petrograd.
38. The American journalist John Reed, a ‘charismatic socialist and professional rebel’.
39. Feminist journalist Louise Bryant, who travelled to Russia with Reed, her husband.
40. People run for cover during a gun battle on Nevsky Prospect in October 1917.
41. A room in the Tsar’s Winter Palace, ransacked by the Bolsheviks after they took the Palace with little or no resistance.
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Author’s Note
fn1 St Petersburg had been renamed Petrograd on the outbreak of war with Germany in 1914.
Prologue
fn1 Germans, too, but they had all left with the outbreak of war in 1914.
fn2 According to Negley Farson, the British embassy had their own golf balls sent out from England in the embassy despatch bags, as ‘golf balls were as valuable as hawk’s eggs in war-time’.
fn3 Buchanan had previously served in Vienna under his father, as well as in Rome, Tokyo, Berne, Darmstadt, Berlin and The Hague.
fn4 The climate in St Petersburg never suited Sir George and his health suffered, so much so that when Sir Edward Grey discovered how often Sir George was ill, he offered him the post of ambassador to Vienna – but Sir George opted to stay in Petrograd.
fn5 Julia Grant and her prince had enjoyed a swish high-society wedding at one of the Astor mansions on Newport Rhode Island in 1899, in the presence of the glitterati of the East Coast, who had lavished the couple with gifts of diamonds, Sèvres porcelain, monogrammed silver and Lalique glass. Grant was one of several American ‘buccaneers’ who married into the Russian aristocracy and were doyennes of the Petrograd social set before the revolution.
fn6 With no solid evidence to substantiate such allegations, and suggestions that his marriage was not happy, it seems more likely that the lonely Francis, who liked a pretty face, simply enjoyed Madame de Cram’s female friendship and company.
fn7 More significantly, with Francis’s assistance, Jordan was one of only two Americans granted permission by the Petrograd Chief of Police to take photographs in the city.
fn8 Ordinary Russians could only get alcohol on the black market, or on a doctor’s prescription.
Chapter 1
fn1 Dosch-Fleurot was the son of a German immigrant to Oregon. He had adopted his French mother’s surname, Fleurot, during the war to avoid difficulties when reporting on the Western Front.
fn2 Kennon (1845–1924) was a notable American traveller and explorer who had written numerous exposés of the Russian penal system in Siberia.
fn3 Williams’s reports were also syndicated to the Daily Telegraph and New York Times.
fn4 Many of the reports were simply credited as being ‘by our Petrograd correspondent’ – or something similar – and it is difficult applying credit where due to some of the front-line reporting by British and American journalists during the revolution.
fn5 A droshky was a two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage for hire, the Russian equivalent of a hansom cab or taxi.
fn6 The trained nurses were Red Cross sisters, principally from St Thomas’s and St Bart’s, London.
fn7 Built in the eighteenth century as the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, it was reconstructed in the nineteenth and in 1883 was bought by Grand Duke Sergey and his wife Ella, sister of the Empress. After the Grand Duke was assassinated in 1905, his wife took the veil and gifted the palace to Dmitri Pavlovich, who retained his own private apartments there on the ground floor. It was here that he and Felix Yusupov took refuge, hysterical and covered in blood, after they had murdered Rasputin.
fn8 Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Helena, was married to Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.
fn9 Enid was a niece of Bram Stoker, author of the Gothic novel Dracula.
fn10 A ‘very charming and sensible woman, worth 17 Lady Muriels’, in the view of ARH surgeon Geoffrey Jefferson. ‘They are all very fed up with Lady M here, as she has such silly ideas and is always wanting some fresh scheme.’ The triumvirate of Grey, Paget and Lady Georgina Buchanan would prove to be volatile, with one nurse describing them as ‘formidable, brave, dutiful and decidedly rivalrous’.
fn11 These were aristocratic families closely linked to the British royals.
fn12 The Mexican president, ousted in a coup in 1911, who had died in exile in 1915.
fn13 Her real name was Lillie (Madeleine) Bouton. Daughter of a grain elevator worker from Iowa and sometime actress in American repertory theatre and on the Continent, she had charmed the extremely wealthy Count Grigory Nostitz, a military attaché at the Russian embassy in Paris, into marrying her; he was the second of three aristocratic husbands.
fn14 Dioxygen was apparently used as a tooth-whitener at this time.
fn15 Most of the army units now in Petrograd were reservists, the cream of the regular army having gone to the front, leaving largely inexperienced conscripts in the city, some of whom were industrial strikers, forced into the army as punishment
Chapter 2
fn1 Sources conflict on the correct temperature, with many giving it as much lower than it really was. See endnote.
fn2 The munitions workers were well paid and, as they were key workers, they were also receiving larger bread rations, so they were therefore more reluctant to come out on strike.
fn3 Nor was it till after the Tsar’s abdication on 3 March, when the tsarist censorship collapsed and proper reporting could begin, meaning that the earliest reports out of Russia were not published in the West until around 16 March (NS).
Chapter 3
fn1 Accounts vary considerably – some say one of the Cossacks fired, but Thompson, who was at the scene, is very clear that it was a sabre blow.
fn2 Stopford’s credentials remain mysterious. He went to Petrograd in August 1916, ostensibly to sell a wireless installation for aeroplanes to the Russian government, but soon ingratiated himself into the top drawer of the Russian aristocracy and the Petrograd social circuit, from which position he passed on insider information to Sir George Buchanan.
fn3 In Paris in 1912 Pax had briefly been mistress to the British secret agent Sidney Reilly.
fn4 The Congregational Church in Petrograd had become known as the ‘American Church’ because the previous American ambassador and many of his suite had worshipped there.
Chapter 4
fn1 The former Turkish embassy had been housed, till the outbreak of war in 1914, in the Kantemirovsky Palace at number 8 Palace Embankment; the building was subsequently leased by the NCB for its Petrograd offices. The huge high-ceilinged rooms on the second floor were converted to bank facilities, fitted out with desks, typewriters and adding machines.
fn2 Here, as in other instances where Thompson refers to specific photographs that he took at the time, the negatives – or even prints of them – do not seem to have survived. Nor were they included in Thompson’s book of photographs of Russia in 1917, Blood-Stained Russia.
fn3 Probably George Mewes, one of the Mirro
r’s first war photographers and the only official British photographer assigned to the Russian army at the front.
fn4 The term was probably first coined in Hamilton Fyfe’s report from Petrograd in the Daily Mail for 16 March 1917 (NS), which talked of it being a ‘benign revolution’ that would rid Russia of the ‘pro-German and reactionary elements’.
fn5 This act of generosity, however, was not always well received, for the troops disliked finely made cigarettes, preferring the very strong, cheap Russian papirosy made from vile-smelling makhorka.
fn6 Sadly it has not been possible to identify this eyewitness, who published his vivid and valuable account anonymously.
Chapter 5
fn1 Sazonov had been appointed Russian Ambassador to Great Britain early in 1917, but the outbreak of the February Revolution had prevented him from taking up his post.
fn2 Such as Victoria Melita, Grand Duchess Kirill – known as ‘Ducky’ in the royal family – who was a daughter of Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Alfred.
Caught in the Revolution Page 46