European studies blog: Russia

19 May 2017

Dmitrii Moor interrogates: Have You Bought Your Ticket?

One of the main founders of Soviet political poster design, Dmitrii Orlov was born in 1883 in Novochekassk to the family of an engineer. In 1898 the family moved to Moscow. Although the young artist did not receive a systematic training, he started publishing caricatures in the satirical magazines that thrived during a short period after the first revolution in Russia in 1905. Early in his career, Orlov adopted the pseudonym D. Moor, alluding to Karl Moor, one of the protagonists in Friedrich Schiller’s romantic play The Robbers.

Having started as a caricaturist in satirical magazines, Moor was very much influenced by the German satirical publication Simplicissimus (British Library LOU.F459) and the Norwegian artist and designer Olaf Gulbransson, known for his clear lines and emphasis on linking verbal and non-verbal messages. Moor’s artistic style also incorporated imagery from silent films with their exaggerated emotions, which can be seen on this film poster:

Moor’s poster for the lost black-and-white film Ubiitsa (The Murderer)

It is interesting that he returned to a similar style in the 1930s: the worker on this poster bears a striking resemblance to the criminal from the film poster:

‘Workers of the World Unite!’ Poster by Moor from the 193os. British Library 1899.c.12(22).

Today Moor is probably best known for his famous Red Army Recruitment poster of 1920, which appears on the poster for our current exhibition, Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths. Moor is also considered one of the main founders of that unique area of Soviet art – political poster design. His other striking posters, well known to Soviet audiences, include ‘Wrangel is still alive! Finish him off without mercy!’ and ‘Be on Your Guard!’

‘Wrangel is still alive! Finish him off without mercy!’ (left), as reproduced in the album Krasnaia Armiia (Moscow, 1938) designed by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. Cup.1247.dd.20.

‘Be on Your Guard!’ (1920) Maps CC.6.a.38

Here the right shoulder and raised leg of the Red Army soldier actually become the western state border, and thus the soldier personifies the state. His body is the body of Soviet Russia (his back rests against and fuses into the Urals, depicted as the bony ‘spine’ of the country – in Russian the same word means both ‘spine’ and ‘mountain range’). The vitality and resilience of the state is equated with the strength and will of its citizenry-in-arms.

Moor’s Alphabet for a Red Army Soldier, published in 1921, is a small book of cartoons intended to teach soldiers literacy as such and ‘political literacy’ at the same time: each letter is illustrated by a picture emphasising the special mission and the triumphs of the Soviet forces. The letter ‘G’ is the initial letter of the Russian word goret’ (‘to burn’), and the inscription to this picture reads: ‘The Earth burns with a fire lit by the worker’s hand.’ Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders hoped to instil in the Red Army a sense of historic mission, and an understanding that it was not simply a conventional national army but the custodian of world revolution.

In the image for the letter ‘IA’ (Я), which also means the pronoun ‘I’ in Russian, the artist emphasised the idea of the new world and the new man who from now on will dominate in space and time for the next century: “The new Man has come! Long live the century of the Commune!”:

And there are examples of Moor’s caricature style, where enemies of the Soviet state look miserable and laughable. However, in most of the cases Moor uses the narrative and graphical themes that were very common and reproduced in many variations, such as Lenin sweeping the counter-revolutionary elements out of the country or a collection of ‘typical’ enemies opposing the new way of life.

In the 1920s Moor worked for the anti-religious satirical newspaper The Godless and its reincarnation as the satirical magazine The Godless at the Workbench. The secularization of society and promotion of atheism was a crucial element of the ‘cultural revolution’ desired by the Bolsheviks, as Orthodox Christianity had been a pillar of support for the Tsarist state. Under Stalin anti-religious propaganda soon became quite aggressive. In 1925 the League of Militant Atheists, a volunteer organisation that promoted anti-religious views, was formed. In this image the peasant is sneezing out his religious beliefs under the supervision of the worker.

Bezbozhnik u stanka (‘The Godless at the Workbench’; Moscow, 1923) P.P.8000.rs.

Many art critics compared the aesthetics of Moor’s posters with the aesthetics and compositions of Sergei Eisenstein’s films and this is this is very true, as Moor was always thinking about perception of his works. For example, he wrote that a poster artist should not only be a complete craftsman in graphics, but also analyse the situation in which his art would be seen. He suggested that a poster artist should know the speed with which passers-by walk, the width of the streets in his town, the position of lights in the evening and many other things. It is not surprising then that his piece of agitation art invites you – or commands you – to come to our exhibition.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

The British Library’s exhibition Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths is open until 29 August 2017, telling the extraordinary story of the Russian Revolution from the reign of Russia’s last Tsar to the rise of the first communist state. You can also read articles from our experts exploring some of the themes of our exhibition on our Russian Revolution website.

Posted by Susan Reed at 10:00 AM in Propaganda , Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic , Visual arts | Permalink

15 May 2017

Not Lenin and Trotsky - a Mystery Solved?

Last year we published a blog post asking for information on two photographs by the American photographer Donald C. Thompson, widely published as images of Lenin and Trotsky in the English-speaking world but, with the benefit of hindsight, clearly not pictures of the two revolutionary leaders. We knew for certain who they were not, but struggled to find out who they were and what they were doing.

After some digging, Katya Rogatchevskaia (Lead Curator of East European Collections and of the exhibition, Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths) managed to find the photographs reproduced in Russian and French publications. The elusive revolutionaries were found in a Russian ‘album of current events’ for the years 1914 to 1917 Voina i Revolutsiia (‘War and Revolution’).

Donald Thompson’s photographs as published in Voina i Revolutsiia ([Petrograd, 1918?]) British Library X.802/4756.

The top-left photograph identifies the speaker as ‘German agent’ Robert Grimm, leaving the other man unidentified. The bottom photograph identifies the figures as ‘internationalists’, including Christian Rakovsky, Grimm, and Angelica Balabanova. They are shown laying wreaths at the Field of Mars in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd), where victims of the February Revolution were buried on 23 May 1917. This fits perfectly with Thompson’s story about when and where he took the photographs of ‘Lenin and Trotsky’, even if the figures are not right.

Robert Grimm (1881-1958) was a Swiss socialist, and a chief organiser of the anti-war Zimmerwald movement during the First World War. He was allowed into Russia after the fall of the first Provisional Government, led by Lvov, in May 1917, and became active in the anti-war movement. Grimm was embroiled in scandal while trying to gauge the German response to the Soviet desire for peace, which was interpreted as trying to get Russia to pull out of the war unilaterally and seen as a betrayal of the Allied cause – hence, Voina i Revolutsiia describes him as a ‘German agent’. This was by no means the end of his political career, however. Grimm led the Swiss General Strike of November 1918, and in 1946 became President of the Swiss National Council.

Robert Grimm (Image from Wikimedia Commons).

Angelica Balabanova (1878-1965) was another Zimmerwald activist of mixed Russian, Jewish, and Italian heritage. She joined the Bolsheviks and in 1919 became the secretary of the Communist International (Comintern), but grew critical of the authoritarian Bolshevik style of socialism and returned to Italy.

At first I was uncertain about the identification of Christian Rakovsky (1873-1941), even though he was a known friend and collaborator of Grimm and Balabanova – I had only ever seen pictures of him clean-shaven and looking much younger than the figure in the photograph. However, it would make sense for him to be present alongside his Zimmerwald comrades. Rakovsky was a Bulgarian revolutionary who was also involved in the Zimmerwald movement, who had been freed from imprisonment in May 1917 – explaining, possibly, his haggard appearance in the photographs later in that month.

Christian Rakovsky in military uniform after the Bolshevik revolution (image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Other photographs and images do show him sporting a beard, like this piece of anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic propaganda, with leading revolutionaries (including Alexander Kerensky alongside the Bolsheviks as part of a putative Jewish conspiracy against the Russian state) engaged in a ritual murder, evoking the history of the ‘blood libel’ myth.

White movement propaganda poster showing Rakovsky with a beard, kneeling in the centre beneath Lenin, from Wikimedia Commons.

Rakovsky joined the Bolsheviks at the end of 1917 and took a number of leading roles, including as the leader of a failed Communist revolution in the Kingdom of Rumania and then the first head of government for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. His fate was less happy than Grimm’s – Rakovsky aligned with Trotsky and developed a critique of Stalinist ‘bureaucratic centralism’ in the Soviet Union. He became a high-profile victim of the Moscow Trials in 1938, confessing to spurious charges of espionage on behalf of the British, German and Japanese imperialists during the show trials, and was executed in 1941.

So, the two pictures of ‘Lenin and Trotsky’ may actually be of three people – Grimm, Rakovsky, and another. One possible, though uncertain, identity of this ‘third man’ comes from the French source. The images also appear in the Histoire des Soviets series (Paris, 1922-3; 1854.g.15.).This album was edited by Jacques Makowsky (1894-1981), a Jewish master-printer to Tsar Nicholas II who fled Russia for France after the Revolution.

With the Nazi invasion of France in 1940 Makowsky was forced to flee once more to America, where his wife and he became famous for cross-breeding the Rock Cornish game hen – ‘a succulent bird with all-white meat, large enough for a single serving’. There is a compilation of this beautifully printed and illustrated series on YouTube here, with one of the photographs in question visible at 0:21.

One of the covers of the Histoire des Soviets series (Paris, 1922-3) 1854.g.15.

We get our third name from here: Mikhail Martinov (1882-1919). Martinov was a Bolshevik revolutionary who had been elected chairman of the particularly left-wing Kronstadt Soviet. Not long after these photographs were taken Martinov was elected to the commission charged with planning the armed demonstration of workers, soldiers and sailors which developed into the violent July Days. Martinov himself met a violent end just two years later, killed in a counter-revolutionary uprising at Krasnaia Gorka during the advance of the White General Yudenich’s army towards Petrograd.

We can’t be certain that the Histoire is correct on this point, as although it correctly says that Grimm was in the photographs, it mistakenly identifies the wrong figure as him. As for Martinov, I know of no other photographs with which to compare, but it is perfectly feasible that he would have been present at this event. Much of the mystery has been solved, but this point still remains to be verified or supported with other evidence.

Mike Carey, CDA Student, British Library and University of Nottingham

‘Workers of all lands, unite!’: The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto, a political pamphlet by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, was first published in London in 1848. Here for the first time, the founders of the political theory later called Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predicted violent anti-capitalist revolution as the final stage of the class wars between proletariat and bourgeoisie. They could not imagine that what they called ‘the spectre of communism’ would first triumph in Russia – geographically and economically the furthest eastern European periphery. Marxism, however, was adopted by the Russian Social Democrats as the cornerstone of their ideology and adapted by Lenin and other Bolsheviks to the real conditions of the Russian Revolution.

The extremely rare first edition of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published in London in 1848. British Library C.194.b.289.

Originally written in German the 23-page brochure was produced in three print runs just in February 1848, and then serialised in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, a newspaper for German émigrés (London, 1845-1851; NEWS14530). In March, the brochure reached Paris and in April it was available in Germany, as the 1848 Revolution was unfolding in Europe. As initially planned, the Manifesto was soon translated into Polish, Danish, Swedish and English. However, it failed to make any great impact, and after the defeat of the Revolution only a few editions appeared until the next rise of the social-democratic movement that culminated in the Paris Commune (1871). Among the editions that did appear was the first Russian one, published in Geneva in 1869. The translation was traditionally attributed to Mikhail Bakunin, although his name was not on the title page. Several years earlier, in 1861, Bakunin had escaped from his Siberian exile and reached London via Japan and America.

Even before revolution turned victorious in Russia, translations and editions of this work had become ubiquitous. Before 1917, around 60 editions of the Manifesto were published in Russia alone. It was published at least 85 times in English and around 50 times in French. In 1964, Soviet historians and bibliographers claimed that they had recorded around 700 editions in 49 languages outside the USSR only. By 1973, the Soviet Union was leading in this race by publishing 447 editions in 74 languages and 44,341,000 copies.

An edition of the Manifesto in Russian, published in Geneva in 1900. C.106.b.7.(13.)

The 1869 Russian translation, although it made its way to Russia, did not get popularity, and it was not until 1882, when with the second translation by the ‘first Russian Marxist’ Georgii Plekhanov . Marx and Engels wrote a special preface for this Russian edition where they discussed the peculiarities of the Russian economic and social system. In Soviet historiography it was believed that Lenin also translated the Manifesto and his translation was in clandestine circulation in Marxist learning groups in Samara, where he used to live in 1889-1890. The translation apparently did not survive.

Among other translators who endeavoured this work were revolutionaries Vladimir Posse (1903), Vatslav Vorovsky (1906), the founder of the Marx-Engels Institute David Riazanov, and the deputy manager of the Central Archives Board Vladimir Adoratskii.

In this photograph of Lenin and Stalin with the delegates of 8th Bolshevik party Congress of 1919 Riazanov is the fourth from the right in the top row. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

The special reverence for the Manifesto that was common among Russian Marxists is described in the diary of an astronomer and scientist Daniil Sviatskii, who was arrested for his role the 1905 unrest. In January 1906 he wrote:

I came [to the office]. There was a whole bunch [of books] on the table. I started examining them with admiration. ‘You are allowed to take only three’ – said the officer, and I was hesitating for a long time which ones to take. Among my three books, I took the Communist Manifesto and will be reading this New Testament of Socialism for the tenth time. While I was choosing other books, the office examined the copy of the Manifesto is case of any notes. I was looking at him and thinking: ‘Only three years ago, when I still was in the seminary, I first read this work by the great Marx and Engels. I was reading a clandestine copy of the Manifesto and was afraid that the authorities in the seminary would notice and expel me from the college, or when I was at home, I was afraid of gendarmes who could arrest me. Three years ago! In March 1905, just 10 months ago, I was reading the Geneva edition at night and every night I used to take it out of the room and hide in snow. And now the same book with the forward by the veteran of our Social-Democratic movement Plekhanov just passed censorship and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. And the prison officer in front of me, having examined it, handed it to me! I took it, brought to my solitary confinement cell and put it on the desk. I tore out Marx’s portrait and for a long time was gazing at our great Teacher of life.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

The British Library’s exhibition Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths opens on 28 April 2017, telling the extraordinary story of the Russian Revolution from the fall of Russia’s last Tsar to the rise of the first communist state. You can also read articles from our experts exploring some of the themes of our exhibition on our Russian Revolution website.

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in History , Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic , Translation | Permalink

28 April 2017

Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths

The British Library’s exhibition Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths opens today, marking the 100th anniversary of the Revolution, an event that changed history and profoundly influenced the course of the 20th century. The exhibition follows Russian history from the reign of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, to the death of Lenin in 1924, telling the story not only from the perspective of key players and ‘great men’ but from that of the ordinary people who lived through these extraordinary times.

On entering the gallery, visitors will see two vast maps of ‘European’ and ‘Asian’ Russia before the First World War, giving an idea of the sheer scale of the Russian Empire. Alongside them is our rare first edition of the Communist Manifesto, the slim 24-page pamphlet whose influence would help to overturn that huge empire.

The introduction to the exhibition (picture by Sam Lane Photography)

The first main section of the exhibition explores the last years of Tsarist Russia in more detail, looking at the vast social and ethnic diversity of the Empire, at the growing political opposition to the monarchy and at the revolutionary events of 1905 which led to the establishment of Russia’s first parliament (Duma). Star exhibits here include the lavish album published to commemorate Nicholas II’s coronation and Lenin’s letter applying for a reader’s ticket for the British Museum Library.

An opening from the Coronation Album, Les Solennités du saint couronnement (St Petersburg, 1899) L.R.25.c.20 (picture by Sam Lane Photography)

The second section takes us from the outbreak of the First World War to the Revolutions of February and October 1917, the latter of which saw Lenin’s Bolshevik faction seize power. Among the documents on display are a copy of the Tsar’s abdication declaration, and ‘Order no.1’ issued by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on 1(14) March 1917, which overturned traditional military discipline and had a powerful effect far beyond the Petrograd garrison to which it referred. And one exhibit has a hidden personal story: a display of banknotes issued by the Provisional Government come from the family of the exhibition’s lead curator.

‘Order no.1’ ([Petrograd, 1917]) HS.74/1870

In the third section we look at the Civil War which engulfed Russia in the aftermath of the October Revolution. In order to try and explain some of the complexity of this period – more correctly referred to as Civil Wars in the plural rather than a single two-sided conflict – a large animated map shows how the different factions gained and lost control. The formation of the Red Army is examined, with hand-written memoranda by Trotsky among the items displayed, but also in this section are some examples from the British Library’s collection of rare propaganda from the White (anti-Bolshevik) movement, ranging from seemingly uninspiring pamphlets on cheap paper to striking posters.

A White Army recruitment poster for Caucasian Muslim cavalrymen (1919). 1856.g.8.(30)

As the Civil Wars raged, the Bolshevik party were trying to consolidate and maintain their grip on power, and this is the theme of the fourth section. The devastating famine that spread through Russia and the Bolsheviks’ war on religion are also examined here, and of course we look at the fate of the Tsar and his family. Yet alongside these tragic events there was an outpouring of optimism among some that a better world was being born. We show some striking art and propaganda produced not only by avant-garde artists such as Mayakovsky but also by a group of women factory workers from Yalta, who produced their own ‘wall newspaper’, with essays, poems and pictures celebrating their work and their new-won literacy. This section also looks at the cult of Lenin that developed in Soviet Russia and at the experience of flight and exile for opponents of the new state.

‘The Yalta Female Delegate’, Wall Newspaper (1927) Add.MS.57556 (picture by Sam Lane Photography)

The last section looks at international dimensions of the Revolution, first from the perspective of foreigners living in Russia during the period: journalists reporting on the situation, soldiers involved in allied anti-Bolshevik intervention during the civil war, and spies reporting on Russia’s new rulers. Then we turn to the influence of the Revolution outside Russia. The Bolsheviks hoped that revolution would spread from Russia, ‘setting the world on fire’, and indeed revolutions did break out in many European states, notably Germany and Hungary, but there were short lived ‘soviets’ in many other places, and communists around the world advocated the Soviet cause and formed links with Russian institutions. A banner presented to the Young Communist League of Shipley by Russian textile workers, and on loan to the exhibition from the People’s History Museum, illustrates such connections. Finally we look at the struggles for independence in states of the former Russian Empire and the formation of the Soviet Union in the early 1920s.

A worker setting the world on fire with revolution, image from Dmitrii Moor, Azbuka krasnoarmeitsa ([Moscow, 1921]) Cup.401.g.25.

Finally, an epilogue looks at how the Revolution was depicted on film and in literature in the 20th century, featuring clips from famous and less well-known Soviet films, and the work of four Russian Nobel literature laureates.

The exhibition runs until 29 August, and we hope it will inform, inspire and intrigue visitors, taking them on a journey through a world-changing period of history and raising questions about how it should be understood today,and what contemporary resonances might be found in the events of 100 years ago. There is also a season of events with something for everyone from a late-night ‘Storming of the British Library’ to readings and lectures. Full details can be found on our website.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies, and Co-Curator of Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths

Detail from Dmitrii Moor, ‘Have You Volunteered?’, Red Army recruitment poster (1920). HS.74/2009(10)

Posted by Susan Reed at 2:33 PM in Exhibitions , Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic | Permalink

Tags: Russian Revolution

22 April 2017

Lenin's Birthday

One of my very first childhood memories was a happy day, 22 April 1970, when the entire Soviet Union was celebrating the centenary of Lenin’s birth. I still remember an overwhelming sensation of pride, an excitement that spring brings with its smells after long winter, and envy toward the Young Pioneers who were assembled to march along the main street of Moscow to Red Square. I was watching them from the fourth floor flat in this main street wishing to grow up as quickly as possible to become a Little Octobrist and then a Young Pioneer and a member of Komsomol .

Badges of the Soviet youth groups, l.-r., Little Octobrists (7-9 years), Young Pioneers (10-15) and Komsomol (14-28)

My childhood wish was very easily satisfied as membership of these organisations was technically compulsory. As I grew older Lenin on my badge was also becoming older and bolder. The image of the ‘most human of all humans’ was ubiquitous and based on legendary accounts and fake memoirs. Some historians believe that the attempt on Lenin’s life on 30 August 1918, which triggered the Red Terror, also laid the foundations of a cult of Lenin, as his recovery from the serious wounds was miraculously quick.

Soviet Wall Calendar, 1920s. Cup.645.a.6.(65).

The design of this wall calendar imitates popular traditional motives and the composition of the Resurrection from Christian icons. However, Christ has been replaced with Lenin and the traditional warrior figure on the left bears the hammer and sickle on his breastplate. Lenin himself was not keen on being the object of worship, but even in his own lifetime he could not prevent it, and by the time of his death he was fully sacralised.

Natan Altman, a star of the Russian avant-garde, was interested in immortalising Lenin in the visual arts. His series of drawings of Lenin in his office in the Kremlin was published straight after Altman had finished it. The artist spent six weeks with Lenin in July 1920 and recalled that they spoke a lot about art and revolution. Based on these sketches, he created Lenin’s bust in bronze. It was the first portrait of Lenin to be shown abroad – at the Paris exhibition in 1925, where Altman received a gold medal for his work.

Sketches from Natan Altman, Lenin: Risunki Al’tmana (St Petersburg, 1921) C.135.g.22.

In 1920 Lenin was very busy also sitting for the English sculptress, journalist and writer Clare Sheridan, who at that time was having an affair with the prominent revolutionary and Lenin’s Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (government) Lev Kamenev. She stayed in the Kremlin for two months, where she made busts of the prominent leaders of the Russian Revolution. She spoke candidly with the Bolsheviks as she worked, discussing with Lenin his dislike of her cousin Winston Churchill. She later wrote a book Russian portraits, where she described her Russian experience.

Portrait of Clare Sheridan wearing a Russian-style fur hat from her book Russian Portraits (London, 1921) 9456.d.22.

Book tributes to Lenin started appearing before his death. Such was, for a example, a chronicle of his life published for his 50th birthday.

Ko dniu piatidesiatiletiia so dnia rozhdeniia Vladimira Il’icha Ul’ianova (Lenina) (Moscow, 1920) 1765.f.2

One of the key figures of Russian literary Futurism, Aleksei Kruchenykh, wrote a book where he examined Lenin’s speeches and his style. He endeavoured to study them from a linguistic point of view as an example of propaganda art. Kruchenykh’s artistic study was inspired by academic works coming from the circle of literary critics and scholars called ‘formalists’, who were more interested in analysing the structures of literary texts, rather than in their historical, social and other contexts. Although the book could be seen as part of the trend of the rising cult of Lenin, the foundations principles of formalism were severally criticised under Stalin, and the book was forgotten.

One of the ‘devices’ of Lenin’s rhetorical style was what Kruchenykh called ‘resoluteness’. He insisted that Lenin was primarily the ‘person of deeds’, and not a ‘person of words’: ‘He doesn’t leave space for hesitation, as many authors or speakers do, when they speak as if asking for an advice from the audience. He sets himself a task not to convince the audience, but to put the audience face to face with the necessity to agree with the [inevitable] facts’.

This ‘resoluteness’ was probably a feature of Lenin’s character rather than only a rhetorical device. The country built by the man who did not know hesitation and probably was incapable of simple empathy collapsed having murdered millions of its citizens. Little did I know on this happy day 22 April 1970 how wrong were my feelings. Unfortunately, the birth of the third child in the family of a civil servant Ilia Nikolaevich Ul’ianov was not such a happy day for the course of the Russian and world history.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

Posted by Susan Reed at 10:00 AM in Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic | Permalink

16 April 2017

Happy Easter from Imperial Russia

Among various collections of visual material at the British Library we have a collection of postcards (HS.74/2027) published by the pioneer of postcard production in Russia, the Society of Saint Eugenia. The Society started as a charity organisation to support nurses who had served in the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, but after the war had no means of livelihood. Supported by artists and elites the society was patronised by Princess Eugenia of Leuchtenberg (1845-1925), a cousin of Tsar Alexander III, father of Nicholas II.

The Society supported hospitals, subsidised nursing homes and organised learning courses for young nurses to prepare them for work at the front in the war-time. To fund its activities, the Society started a publishing business, producing popular and commercially viable picture postcards with landscapes, photographs, art works reproduced on cards and made especially for the postcard format. Artists close to the World of Art group as well as other famous and popular painters and illustrators, such as Dmitrii Mitrokhin, Nikolai Samokish, Stepan Iaremich and many others took active part in the work of the society and contributed their art works to the print production of the Society.

The first printing endeavour of the Society was a decorative envelope for Easter 1896. Under a different name the Society continued its work after the Russian Revolution in 1917 and in 30 years of its existence produced around 6,500 postcards, with an average print-run of 10,000 each.

The use of postcards for holiday greetings definitely commercialised even religious holidays, such as Christmas and Easter. But we think that you might like to get our sincere Easter greetings with these old Russian postcards.

Happy Easter!

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

The British Library’s exhibition Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths opens on 28 April 2017, telling the extraordinary story of the Russian Revolution from the fall of Russia’s last Tsar to the rise of the first communist state.

Posted by Susan Reed at 10:15 AM in Russia , Slavonic , Visual arts | Permalink

Tags: Easter , Postcards

15 March 2017

Pskov, Pskov, 35.015: Railway and Revolution

In Boris Pasternak’s novel Dr Zhivago there is an episode when a young telephone operator Kolya is having a conversation the meaning of which is not initially quite clear to the reader:

Kolya was as usual conducting another conversation and, judging by the decimal fractions which embellished his speech, transmitting a message in code over a third instrument. ‘Pskov, Pskov, can you hear me? – What rebels? What help? What are you talking about, Mademoiselle? Ring off, please. – Pskov, Pskov, thirty-six point nought one five. – Oh, hell, they’ve cut me off. – Hullo, hullo, I can’t hear. – Is that you again, Mademoiselle? I’ve told you, I can’t, speak to the station-master. All lies, fable – Thirty six … Oh, he… Get off the line, Mademoiselle’ (translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari).

Pskov railway station (postcard)

In fact the author made this character in his novel into a witness and a player in the big game which was to change Russian history for good. From the beginning of the unrest in Petrograd that started on 8 March (23 February) 1917, parliamentarians and politicians had been discussing various options of dealing with the disorder.

Yurii Lomonosov, a transport engineer and employee of the Ministry of Transport recorded in his diary on 14 (1) March 1917:

In the Duma, they debated for the whole day what had to be done. There were various suggestions: dethronement, abdication or persuasion, in other words – Tsarina’s arrest and appointment of a responsible ministry. They agreed on abdication. The Department of Exploitation clerk brought me an order to send the Tsar’s train to Pskov. I wish to believe that this was the last Imperial train.

Just before discontent started in the capital, Tsar Nicholas II had left his family residence in the suburbs of Petrograd, Tsarskoe Selo, for his army Headquarters in Mogilev.

Tsarskoe Selo railway station (postcard)

Mogilev railway station (postcard)

Yurii Lomonosov and Alexander Bublikov, also a railway engineer and member of the Duma, were tasked with preventing the Tsar’s train from re-entering Petrograd, so that he could not get support from any loyal troops or advisors, and negotiators could put pressure on the monarch to abdicate. As General Spiridovich, Commander of the Imperial Guards, recalled in his memoirs:

The Tsar ordered to reply that he was waiting for Rodzianko [Head of the Duma] at the Dno station. The Tsar was walking along the platform for quite a while. All were surprised to learn that General Ivanov [commander of the Petrograd Military District with powers of martial law granted by the Tsar] had just arrived to the station with his train […]. We found out that while General Ivanov was at the station, several trains full of drunken soldiers arrived there. Many were rude and imprudent. Ivanov ordered to arrest several dozens of soldiers. Many of them were searched and a lot of officers’ belongings were found on them. They had probably been looted in Petrograd. In a manner of an old father figure Ivanov berated them, ordered to stay on their knees, beg pardon. He took the arrested in his train. All this, as told by witnesses was very strange and made an impression of something trivial, funny and sham.

On 15 (2) March 1917 Nicholas II signed an act of abdication under pressure from his ministers. Unwilling to place the burden of rulership on his frail 13-year-old son Alexei, he named his brother, Grand Duke Michael, as his successor. The following day, Michael announced that he would not take the throne unless a constituent assembly elected by ‘universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage’ voted to maintain the monarchy.

Grand Duke Michael’s autograph refusal to accept the throne (From Wikimedia Commons)

As Yurii Lomonosov recorded in his diary, words changed their meaning overnight: mutineers became revolutionaries and loyal troop turned rebels:

‘What is the disposition?’
‘General Ivanov is in Semrin. He is on the phone with the gendarme officers who are going to meet him half way […]. The War Duma Committee ordered to stop all the [rail] traffic. We obeyed […] the order, but instead of destroying the tracks we took away parts of railroad switches, numbered them and took to Petrograd.’
‘Brilliant idea! Thank you very much. One of our telephones will be always connected with your telegraph. Let me know about all movements of General Ivanov.’
And it should be mentioned that the telegraph operators were excellent. They kept sending messages while General Ivanov was shooting their comrades behind the wall. We knew his every step.
As soon as I finished this telephone conversation, I was called again […]:
‘What is happening in Gatchina [an Imperial residence near St Petersburg]?’
‘Twenty thousand loyal troops are there’
‘What do you mean ‘loyal’?’
‘Not revolutionary…’
‘Do remember once and for all: these are rebels. Loyal – are those who are on the people’s side. So, Gatchina has been taken by the rebels. Go on…’ [From the conversation between Lomonosov and the Senior Railway Manager; 16 (3) March 1917]

The Act of Abdication of Nicholas II and his brother Grand Duke Michael, published as a placard that would be distributed by hand or pasted to walls (shelfmark: HS.74/1870)

Already on 12 March (27 February), the ‘Temporary Committee of the State Duma and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies – the two competing branches of power – had been formed, and the following day, the Petrograd Soviet published the first issue of its newsletter, Izvestiia (News). On the day of the abdication Izvestiia issued a special edition in a form of a leaflet, informing their readers about the epoch-making event:

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 2:49 PM in History , Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic | Permalink

08 March 2017

Music of the Revolution: the Hymn of Free Russia

There has been great agitation in Petrograd all day. Processions have been parading the main streets. At several points the mob shouted for ‘Bread and peace!’ At others it sang the Working Man’s Marseillaise. In the Nevsky Prospekt there have been slight disorders.

This is how the French Ambassador to Russia Maurice Paléologue recorded 8 March (23 February old style) 1917, the day when the Russian Revolution started.

Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador's memoirs, translated by F. A. Holt. (London, 1923-25) 09455.ff.3.

Spontaneous demonstrations to mark International Women’s Day were joined by angry women in bread-lines. The next day meetings, riots and strikes in Petrograd were multiplying and mixing with acts of hooliganism and vandalism. Almost all industrial enterprises were shut down and people were matching along the central street in Petrograd, the Nevsky Prospekt, causing severe disruptions to public transport.

Demonstrators were met sympathetically by the middle class and even by some troops. Nicholas II, who had left for the Staff Head Quarters (Stavka) at Mogilev some 400 miles away from the capital just days before the unrest, received belated reports and underestimated (or wanted to underestimate?) the seriousness of the events. When he finally commanded the use of troops to restore order, riots had already spread to some of the regiments stationed in Petrograd. Attempts to restore order ended in clashes between the troops and the protestors which only incited further protests. At the same time, politicians at the Duma (parliament), statesmen at the State Council (the supreme state advisory body to the Tsar) and the cabinet ministers all saw themselves as Russia’s saviours. The overall crisis of the old political system and the regime was so deep that the Tsar’s abdication seemed to be the most straightforward and secure solution. The situation spiralled out of control and within a week Russian Tsarism was over, no-one having risen to defend it.

The news was greeted with great enthusiasm by most Russian intellectuals and liberals. Expectations were high and hopes that a truly free Russia was already a reality turned into a creative euphoria: lyrics, essays and graphics glorifying and celebrating the Revolution and the people who made it happen, appeared in print and were read at rallies and meetings.

On 24 (11) March, the newspaper Birzhevye vedomosti (‘Stock-Exchange News’; Mic.B.1089) published a memo ‘Glazunov and Gorky’, informing readers that the actors of the ex-Imperial – now State – Mariinski Theatre asked the Director of the Petrograd Conservatoire, composer Aleksandr Glazunov, to write a new hymn for the new Russia. This was required for the ceremonial re-opening of the Opera House, which had been closed for a month during the unrest in the capital. As the re-opening was scheduled for the 26 (13) March, Glazunov declined saying that it was an impossible task for him at such a short notice. According to the memo, he suggested to ‬sing a Russian folk song Ekh, ukhnem! aka the ‘Song of the Volga Boatmen’ (you can her it performed here by Feodor Chaliapin in a recording from 1902:Download Эй,_ухнем!_-_Фёдор_Шаляпин). The popular writer Maxim Gorky was asked to make necessary amendments to the lyrics.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, another Romantic composer Aleksandr Grechaninov also came up with the idea of a hymn, performed here in 1926 by David Medoff: Download The_hymn_of_free_Russia_-_Гимн_свободной_России_(text_and_music_-_1917)

Portrait of Grechaninov from the Russian edition of his memoirs (New York, 1952), 10796.bb.23; an English translation by Nicolas Slonimsky (W11/4835) appeared in the same year.

In his memoirs, written in 1934 when he was living abroad having fled Soviet Russia, Grechaninov recalled:

The news of the Revolution of February, 1917, was greeted in Moscow with enthusiasm. People poured into the streets wearing red flowers in their lapels. Strangers embraced each other with tears of joy in their eyes. […] An idea suddenly struck me: I must write a new national anthem! I hurried home, and in half an hour I had composed music of the anthem. But what about the words? The first two lines, "Long live Russia — The country of the free," I took from a poem by Fedor Sologub, but I did not like the rest of the poem. What was I to do? I telephoned Constants Balmont , the poet. He came to see me without delay, and in a few minutes wrote out the text. Manuscript in hand, I went to see Gutheil [a music publisher]. Without wasting any time he sent the music to the printer, and on the following afternoon the Gutheil store displayed copies of my Hymn of Free Russia. The proceeds from the sales were turned over to the liberated political prisoners. The Bolshoy Theater was closed for only a few days. As soon as it reopened, my new anthem was performed, along with the Marseillaise, by the chorus and orchestra of the Bolshoy Theater led by Emil Cooper. Thanks to the simple melody and fine text, my anthem soon became popular, not only in Russia but also abroad. My American friends, Kurt Schindler and his wife, translated it into English, and it was published by the G. Schirmer Company.

Grechaninov, obviously, was not aware that the score had already been published in London in 1917, with ‘with harmonisation and poem by Clarence Lucas’, a Canadian composer, who wrote his own lyrics instead of translating Balmont’s.

A. Grechaninov, The Hymn of Free Russia, harmonisation and poem by Clarence Lucas. (London, 1917) F.1623.e.(9.)

Grechaninov claimed that “the Hymn of Free Russia was still sung even when there was no more freedom left in Russia”, and indeed the tune became a theme of Radio Liberty (RL), that was broadcast to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

Posted by Susan Reed at 9:55 AM in History , Music , Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic | Permalink

01 March 2017

A Silver Watch

One of the first Decrees of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of People’s Commissars was the Decree of 10 (23) November 1917 On Abolition of Estates and Ranks. On 16 (29) December 1917 Lenin also signed the Decree on the Equalization of Rights of All Serving in the Army, which if effect eliminated all rewards, orders and decorations. But building the Red Army brought back the question of ranks, distinctions and awards. In September 1918 the Order of the Red Banner for heroism, dedication, and courage demonstrated on the battlefield was introduced in the Soviet Russia and later in other Soviet republics.

First variant Russian Order of the Red Banner on red cloth backing 1918-1924 (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

After the Soviet Union had been formed in 1922, the Order of the Red Banner received the status (in 1924) of an All-Union award. As of 1 September 1928, 14,678 people had received this award. For a long time it was the only award of the Soviet State, and therefore 285 people were awarded it twice, 31 three times and four people got four orders.

Of course, a problem soon became obvious – how should those who were not exceptionally heroic be encouraged? The Decree of 8 April 1920 stipulated that valuable gifts and cash prizes could be awarded to the military personnel in exceptional circumstances at the discretion of the Revolutionary Military Councils of the fronts and armies.

Here is an award list certifying that one medical doctor Ivan Iosifovich Timofeev of the 502nd Infantry Regiment of the 56th Infantry Division of the Western Front was rewarded with a silver watch for his dedicated work providing medical care to the sick and wounded during the Civil War. In 1918-19 the Red Army attempted a westward offensive into areas abandoned by defeated Germany. Following on this operation, in 1920 Soviet Russia fought a war against the newly-established republic of Poland, advancing as far as the outskirts of Warsaw before being driven back and signing the Peace of Riga in March 1921. However, the armies of the Western front were still stationed in Western Russia with the headquarters in Smolensk.

Award list, 1922. RF.2014.b.34

The certificate is dated June 1922 and signed by the Deputy Commander of the armies Nikolai Efimovich Varfolomeev (1890-1939) and the Member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Western Front Nikolai Frolovich Novikov (1891-1937). Professional officer Varfolomeev joined the Red Army voluntarily in March 1918 and immediately was included in the commission that worked out the new borders between Soviet Russia and Germany in accordance with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended the war between the two countries. Second in command of the Western Front after Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1893-1937), in 1925 Varfolomeev was appointed his deputy as head of strategic training of all military academies of the Red Army. In the British Library, we have books written by Nikolai Varfolomeev on the year 1918 at the Western Front of the ‘Imperialist war’ (Moscow, 1933; Ac.4343.b/3) and the military operation near the town of Mozyr in 1920 (Moscow, 1930; YA.1996.a.23226).

After the civil war was mainly over Nikolai Frolovich Novikov made a career in the party ranks and lived in Moscow in the infamous House on the Embankment, where Tukhachevsky was his neighbour. Tukhachevsky, Varfolomeev and Novikov were executed during the Stalin purges. We do not know the fate of the medical doctor Ivan Timofeev or the secretary who also signed the certificate. But maybe a silver watch treasured in one family is still going.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in History , Modern history , Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic | Permalink

14 February 2017

There, on the Other Shore of the Amur: Stories from Russian Life in China

A historian of Sino-Western relations with a special interest in China’s relationship with Russia, I came to the British Library with a shopping list of titles I had found in the Library’s catalogue and which were unavailable anywhere else. One of them, a rarity and a witness to an era, is the subject of this post.

Measuring only 10 x 14 cm, the little book of stories by I. Georgievskii, Tam, na drugom beregu Amura (‘There, on the Other Shore of the Amur’), is kept in an envelope marked “fragile item, please handle with care”. I hope readers will enjoy a synopsis of the contents; some thoughts on the book will follow.

Cover of I. Georgievskii, Tam, na drugom beregu Amura (Harbin, 1930) British Library 012590.a.24

The title story describes a young woman who, with her three-year-old son, makes a desperate attempt to escape Soviet Russia and join her lost husband. Other than the Amur, the river separating Russia and China, no place names – not even the word China – are mentioned. Smugglers take the two over the Amur at night in a small rowing boat. There is great suspense, but then a happy end: mother and child having somehow transferred to a steamboat, they dock on a bright June day at a friendly wharf. By chance, Lina’s husband happens to be there, awaiting a cargo delivery. The city, into which he then whisks them away in a chauffeur-driven Packard looks more like glamorous Shanghai than Harbin, the Russian-founded railway city in Manchuria and subsequently a haven for Russian refugees from the Revolution and Civil War, where the book was published.

The next story, ‘Shuran’ is about a Russian team transporting a herd of 100,000 sheep to Mongolia through a terrible snow storm, the shuran of the title. The men manage to revive the animals, which had been covered by the snow, but not their old Mongol guide, who had predicted the storm and been frozen to death on his horse.

The rest of the collection has more humour than drama. The hilarious ‘Oy Vey, Masha!’ is about a Jewish colourman, who had escaped the Revolution to China with his wife and two daughters; alas, the family’s new servant Masha, put up in the daughters’ bedroom, turns out to be a young male impostor, a former tsarist officer-in-training. ‘A Night of Horrors’ takes place in Siberia during the Civil War: the ‘horrors’ are merely the very human fears of a soldier guarding an isolated hay warehouse: at first, he is alarmed by an impoverished peasant, then by two dogs, and he displays compassion towards all three. In ‘Crud’, set in tsarist Russia, an elderly shop assistant gets bullied by the senior staff for his shabby appearance and sacked for no fault of his own. However, he soon makes a surprising return in gentleman’s clothes: he was in fact the shop’s owner, who had wanted to test his employees. Another variation on the impostor theme is ‘The Waltz “On Manchurian Hills”’: an inebriated middle-aged man is allowed a dance to a tune made popular after the Russo-Japanese War, but the tender lady who accepts his invitation is a circus strongwoman, and ends up whizzing her poor suitor away to a splashing fall on the dance floor.

There follow four ‘miniatures’. ‘The Sage Fa-Tsai’ is about an old Chinese, whose pearls of wisdom astound his simple-minded employers: thus he suggests to a farmer, who seeks advice about marriage, that he would be better off taking two 20-year-old wives than one 40-year-old. ‘Blood and Sand’ describes a native peddler, apparently a Mongolian, trying hard to sell off a long-suffering marmot in an unidentified small town in Manchuria: haggling over the creature’s price with a potential buyer is conducted in Russo-Chinese pidgin before the sudden appearance of a fierce dog ends the marmot’s life along with the peddler’s hopes for a profit. ‘St Nicholas – Our Saviour on the Waters’ mirrors a perception among Harbin Russians, that the Chinese in town venerated the icon of St Nicholas of Myra, a patron of seafarers in the Russian Orthodox faith which was prominently displayed at the Harbin Central Railway Station. Finally, ‘A Lady from Rouen’ is a sketch of an old Frenchwoman, who was once married in Russia. Speaking funnily in broken Russian, she says she would rather live on as a ‘Russian émigré’ in China than return to her native France, which by now seems alien to her.

Nothing is known about the author of these stories and even his initial cannot be deciphered. The 106 pages of text contain many typos, as well as occasional remnants of Russian pre-revolutionary orthography. The back matter of the book advertised two other forthcoming titles by I. Georgievskii, but apparently neither came out: bibliographies of Russian publishing in China do not list them.

The back cover of Tam, na drugom beregu Amura, advertising further works by the author.

Georgievskii’s book is both a reminder of China as a place of escape from the suffering unleashed by the Russian Revolution a century ago and, in its own little way, is testimony to the new tribulations that awaited émigrés in their unexpected refuge. Russian life in Manchuria was to be severely tested by the Japanese occupation of the region that began in 1931. The Chinese Communist takeover in 1949 signalled the end of the Russian diaspora in China, when its members were dispersed between the Soviet Union and numerous other countries.

Mark Gamsa, Tel Aviv University

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in Literature , Modern history , Rare books , Russia , Russian Revolution , Slavonic | Permalink

Tags: China , Harbin , I.Georgievskii , Russian diaspora

European studies blog

185 posts categorized "Russia"

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Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths

Lenin's Birthday

Happy Easter from Imperial Russia

Pskov, Pskov, 35.015: Railway and Revolution

Music of the Revolution: the Hymn of Free Russia

A Silver Watch

There, on the Other Shore of the Amur: Stories from Russian Life in China

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