”A gripping, vivid, deeply researched chronicle of the Russian Revolution told through the eyes of a surprising, flamboyant cast of foreigners in Petrograd, superbly narrated by Helen Rappaport.” (Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs). Caught in the Revolution is Helen Rappaport`s masterful telling of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution through eye-witness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold. Between the first revolution in February 1917 & Lenin`s Bolshevik coup in October, Petrograd (the former St Petersburg) was in turmoil
- felt nowhere more keenly than on the fashionable Nevsky Prospekt where the foreign visitors & diplomats who filled hotels, clubs, bars & embassies were acutely aware of the chaos breaking out on their doorsteps & beneath their windows. Among this disparate group were journalists, businessmen, bankers, governesses, volunteer nurses & expatriate socialites. Many kept diaries & wrote letters home: from an English nurse who had already survived the sinking of the Titanic; to the black valet of the US Ambassador, far from his native Deep South; to suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, who had come to Petrograd to inspect the indomitable Women`s Death Battalion led by Maria Bochkareva. Helen Rappaport draws upon this rich trove of material, much of it previously unpublished, to carry us right up to the action
- to see, feel & hear the Revolution as it happened to a diverse group of individuals who suddenly felt themselves trapped in a `red madhouse.`