Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy

The title of this non-fiction book intrigued me: Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy (#315), as did the cover photograph of four dancing couples, the women in identical Empire-style gowns, the men in dashing military uniforms.  I realized when I thought about it that I had some idea of what had happened to the French aristocracy after their Revolution, but I had no idea at all about what had happened in twentieth century Russia during my own grandmother's lifetime.  The only image I could bring to mind was Geraldine Chaplin as Dr. Zhivago's long-suffering aristocratic wife being reduced to picturesque poverty in one room of her family's former mansion while Omar Sharif cavorted with Julie Christie in various exotic Russian settings.  According to Douglas Smith, the author of Former People, this is the first attempt in any language to tell the story of what actually happened to those people.

Research into this topic has only been possible for the last twenty years or so, and many survivors of this tumultuous period deemed it safer for their children and grandchildren to forget the past if they remained in Russia.  Things had already started to fall apart for the nobles even before Nicholas II abdicated, but the aftermath was a bitter class war waged by the peasants (the "have nots") with the weight of Bolshevik policies behind them on the aristocracy, military officers, the police, bureaucrats, peasants with their own small holdings, Jews - in other words, the "haves".  The constant threat of arrests, executions, internal exile, forced labor camps, hostage taking and financial extortion hung over these people every day until the end of World War II and beyond.  The sheer numbers of people this affected and who died as a result is simply staggering, and by contrast makes the depredations of the French Revolution a mere drop in the bucket.  But of course, the suppression of all these educated, skilled workers, managers with the burgeoning technological know-how and their replacement by uneducated workers had direct consequences for the Bolsheviks.

Mr. Smith has humanized his history by focusing on the fates of two noble Russian families: the Sheremetevs of St. Petersburg, and one of the sixteen branches of the Golitsyn family of Moscow (the only ones to survive this period.).  Looking through the trove of family pictures of these interconnected clans puts a face on the statistics related here, and makes it real, tragic and immediate.  If you have any interest in the history of Russia, or have read about the fate of the Tsar and his family, you owe it to yourself to fill in the missing gap by reading Former People.