Volume 55, Number 10 · June 12, 2008
Idealists on the Run
By Joseph Frank
Lenin's Private War: The Voyage of the Philosophy Steamer and the Exile of the Intelligentsia
by Lesley Chamberlain
St. Martin's, 414 pp., $27.95
In the fall of 1922, a specially chartered German boat departed from the port of St. Petersburg (then Petrograd), followed six weeks later by another; on board they carried the cream of the Russian intelligentsia of the pre-revolutionary period. Many of the involuntary passengers had participated in the agitation that preceded the Russian Revolution, and were not at all opposed to abolishing the regime of Nicholas II. Some had even participated in the Kerensky government that was overthrown by the Bolsheviks.
Review, 4486 words
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