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Fortune’s Price is published!

Fortune’s Price, the sequel to my first novel Small Acts of Kindness, was published last week.

The book’s action commences in the summer of 1830, a time when Russia experienced an uprising in the Kingdom of Poland and the arrival from the east of a cholera epidemic. The main characters, many of whom the reader will know from the previous book, are fated to interact with these major historic events while confronting their own personal issues.

The Polish revolt was stimulated by the July Days, an uprising in France which toppled the Bourbon monarchy. This event ignited a series of popular revolts across Europe, disturbing the settlement achieved at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.  In Poland, Russia’s failure to allow the Poles to exercise previously agreed liberties had upset liberals for some time, and at the end of November 1830 a group of young soldiers rose up against the Tsar of Russia, who was also the King of Poland.  War was swiftly declared and, after a chaotic and irresolute campaign, the insurrection was finally put down in the early autumn of 1831.

Not much attention  was initially paid in Russia to the spread of cholera, until it started to threaten the towns on the Volga, and ultimately Moscow and beyond.  Very little was understood about the causes of the disease and how it spread, which led to panic and rioting among the people and heavy-handed responses from the authorities.  The government struggled with what measures should be taken and society was swamped by conspiracy theories leading to civil unrest.

When researching these events I dug into the historical sources available, using both personal memoirs of eyewitnesses and also more general histories. The latter included an exhaustive (and exhausting) diplomatic history of post-congress Poland which, for the benefit of the reader, I hope I have managed to condense into a few hundred words. More lively were the relevant parts of  General Orlov’s 1880 history of The Saint Petersburg Grenadiers, later renamed for the King of Prussia, a regiment that fought with distinction in the Polish war.

The family drama that is central to Fortune’s Price is of course fictional, but the issues of legitimacy, heredity, nobility and religion on which it touches were matters of great importance in early 19th Century Russia.  The difference in life expectations experienced by people of different status and rank was very stark. Only legitimate members of the nobility were allowed to own land and serfs; they were exempt from taxation and the officer ranks of the army and civil service were in general exclusively open to them.   Contentious matters were decided by the courts, but the Emperor, as supreme autocrat, had the power to overrule their decisions and often did so, although as time went on they became increasingly reluctant to exercise this prerogative.

Although I have tried hard to ensure the book’s historical accuracy, like its predecessor Fortune’s Price, it is above all intended to entertain.  I hope to transport the readers to a different time and place and to keep them turning the pages until the end.  I also hope that they will learn something new, since the book depicts events in Poland and Russia that are not particularly well known in the UK and also have some resonance today.

Primarily to be read for pleasure, Fortune’s Price does have an underlying message, and the clue is in the title. Having worked in the City of London for many years, I know that wealth and status seldom come without strings attached, and the question therefore arises as to how far people will compromise to attain their desires.  It seems in fact that generally there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Fortune’s Price is available now from the publisher, The Book Guild, and from all good bookshops.  An electronic version is available on Amazon. 

The soviet dacha

Soviet-era dacha in Resheti, near Ekaterinburg

I have just dusted down a talk that I gave some years ago about Russian dachas. I have been asked to give it again in early December. The lecture traces the history of this aspect of Russian life from its start in the 18h Century to the recent past.

In his excellent book, Summerfolk, a History of the Dacha (2003. Ithaca and London), Stephen Lovell describes the Russian dacha as ‘not a place but a way of life’, representing as it does a place of recreation where Russians have, since the mid eighteenth century, escaping the busy pressures of the cities.

In the immediate post-revolutionary period, Dacha ownership came under serious threat.  The notion of holiday homes for the better off was condemned by the intellectual avante guard, for whom ‘the dacha was synonymous with the social and cultural arrière’ (Lovell p. 134).  Indeed, in those early years many dachas were confiscated not only for ideological reasons but to alleviate the chronic housing shortage that existed at the time.

Despite everything, however, the private dacha survived, and in the 1920s came to be tolerated.  Some town dwellers moved to their dachas permanently and others were able to retain them by appealing to friends in high places. In addition, the peasants resumed the pre-revolutionary practice of renting out their homes during the summer period to those escaping the cities.

At the end of the twenties the campaign against so called ‘former people’ resulted in the confiscation of some dachas, but this period of repression did not last long.  The original notion of a dacha as something ‘given’ by the state revived, and workers were encouraged to aspire to own a dacha as a reward for their hard work.  Co-operatives were set up, and books of architectural plans featuring proletarian dacha were published.  Self-build schemes were encouraged, and it was mandated that new dachas should be simple in appearance and not resemble town houses, or pre-revolutionary bourgeoise structures.

The concept of official dacha settlements came into being: holiday homes, approved by the authorities, aimed at accommodating specific  groups of privileged people, such as artists, factory workers and party members. One of the earliest of these was the Polotsov Mansion, an early 20th century building that was converted to a house of rest for workers and opened by Vladimir Lenin in the 1920s.  The poet Boris Pasternak had a dacha at the famous artists’ colony of Peredelniko outside Moscow.  He spent a good deal of time here, seeking to escape the terrible living accommodation available in the city rather than to avoid official attention as is sometimes thought.  In fact, the eyes of the government were firmly focused on the colony, and indeed  both Boris Pilnyak and Itsak Babel were arrested there during the Terror. Chukovsky, the children’s author, described it as ‘Entrapping writers within a cocoon of comfort, surrounding them with a network of spies’ (quoted in The Zhivago Affair. Peter Finn and Petra Couvé, 2014 London, p. 4.).

When it came to holiday homes for the highest echelons of the Party different rules applied.  Lenin enjoyed the luxurious surroundings of a former noble estate near Domodedovo, where he kept his Silver Ghost Rolls Royce. Stalin had several dachas in the Moscow region.  Other party members  enjoyed similar privileges, while they remained in favour. Their story is a long one, and  must therefore form the subject of another post.

Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna and music in 19th Century Russia

Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (1850) Christina Robertson (1796–1854

Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (1850)
Christina Robertson (1796–1854)

As I prepare for the publication and launch of my second novel, Fortune’s Price, I have taken some time out to read a book I came across recently about the life of the Grand Duchess, Elena Pavlovna (1807 – 1873)(pictured above). Born Princess Charlotte of Württemberg, she was the wife of Mikhail Pavlovich, the youngest brother of Alexander 1 and Nicholas 1.  While reading the book, I  discovered that the grand duchess played a significant part in the development of musical education in Russia.

Despite the fact that we now regard Russian music as among the greatest in the cannon, the development of a musical tradition and the establishment of music academies came comparatively late.

There was not a great deal of music played in a secular context until the time of Peter the Great, who died in 1725, and his particular interest lay in promoting improvements in military music.  To this end he imported composers from Germany to teach young soldiers who were obliged to perform every day on the tower of the newly built Admiralty.

Regular concerts started under the Empress Anna (1693 -1640). She invited the Neapolitan composer Francesco Araja to Russia in 1735, where he lived for twenty-five years and presented the first opera with a Russian libretto in 1736.  His career in Russia continued under the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna. We know that Elizabeth was fond not just of music, but also of the young choristers who sang in the imperial chapel.  Indeed it was among their number that she found her life-long companion, Alexey Razumovsky, whom she may or may not have married, and who enjoyed the nickname of ‘The Night Emperor’.

Catherine the Second, despite confessing to having no musical taste herself, not only organised public concert series, but also composed several operas of her own that were staged in the Hermitage Theatre.  In her reign some Russian composers began to appear, but probably the most important was the Polish composer, Josef Koslowsky, who lived much of his life in St Petersburg and who in 1791 wrote the music for the unofficial Russian national anthem ‘Let the thunder of victory rumble!’ with a text by Derzhavin.

In the early years of the 19th century Russian society saw a proliferation of music and opera both by Russian and non-Russian composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Rossini.  The 1830’s witnessed  the emergence of Mikhail Glinka (1804 -1857) (pictured below in 1856) His ‘A life for the Tsar’ (1836) is generally regarded as the first ‘proper’ Russian opera. 

Musical life in St Petersburg was however heavily circumscribed by a proliferation of rules that guaranteed the imperial theatres a virtual monopoly over performances.  Academies for music and singing were established during Nicholas’s reign, but they proved short lived, possibly due to a lack of opportunities beyond the imperial theatres for graduates.

It was not until the 1860’s that musical education was firmly established in St Petersburg. The Grand Duchess, Elena Pavlovna had always been a musical enthusiast. In her later years she became a patron of the great musician, Anton Rubenstein, and it was finally through their influence that a Russian academy of music opened its doors to students in November 1861.

Mikhail Gllnka in 1856. Lithograph. Artist unknown.

The Great Flood of 1824

In this very strange year for weather unseasonable floods have been reported in some parts of the world. I was reminded of this recently when giving my talk ‘The Bronze Horseman, A tale of Peterburg’ to a group of hospitable WI Members in Long Melford.

The talk focusses on Peter the Great and the founding of St Petersburg, and in it I look at Peter’s legacy through the prism of two works of art:  Falconet’s great equestrian statue of Peter that stands in Senate Square, and Pushkin’s poem The Bronze Horseman.  In both the Great Flood that occurred in 1824 and the statue of the horseman take pride of place.

The historian, James Cracraft, wrote in his book on Petrine Architecture about the founding of the city that

‘a less auspicious setting in which to found a city is difficult to imagine.’  The site of St. Petersburg violates virtually every principle of good town planning.  Its climate is damp, it is frozen up for roughly 150 days a year, its soil is poor, it is miles from trade routes, being the most northerly in the world, roughly on a level with Hudson Bay.  Most important for our purposes is the city’s propensity to flood.  In 1986 the city had already flooded 269 times since its foundation.  The floods were generally storm surges, where an unfortunate combination of wind and tide led to the inundation.’

I have always been fascinated by the picture by Fyodor Alexeyev (1754-1824) of the Great flood of 1824, shown above.  This was the artist’s last picture and he is depicting a very recent event.  The scene is Theatre Square.  The flood itself is of course dramatic, but perhaps even more interesting are the scenes of Petersburg life that can be seen struggling through, and sometimes under, the water.  A grandee is making his way home in his carriage, a droshky is almost submerged under the waves.  To the right of the picture an officer of the horse-guards tries to rescue a capsized boat.

Another contemporary, the playwright Alexander Griboyedov, wrote in his memoirs:

’The embankments of the various canals had disappeared and all the canals had united into one. Hundred-year-old trees in the Summer Garden were ripped from the ground and lying in rows, roots upward.’

When the waters finally receded 569 people were dead, and thousands more had been injured.  More than 300 buildings had been washed away. Today of course the city is protected by flood defences completed in 2011, which successfully averted what would have been the 309th flood!

Funding the Moscow Foundling Home, early savings and loans banks in Russia

Recently I have been researching the background to the Moscow Foundling Home, a place which is destined to play a major role in my current work in progress,  ‘In the Shadow of the Flames’ (working title). The action of the novel will be set against the background of  Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, and in particular his occupation of Moscow, in the autumn of that year.

I have written previously on this site about the Foundling Home. The orphanage was  established in the 1770’s by Catherine the Great in imitation of similar institutions elsewhere in Europe, and was intended to cater for the thousands of unwanted children abandoned in Moscow each year. From inception it was a truly enormous undertaking that needed a good deal of funding. One unusual feature was the financial bodies that were set up to meet this need. Initially I found it difficult to find much information on this subject, but eventually I came across an article (1) in the journal Russkii Arkhiv  which, although dry and technical, throws light on the organization and progress of the bank during part of its history. 

On its inception the foundling home was largely funded by donations from the Emperor and also from private citizens. Notable among the latter was the eccentric mining and metals magnate, Prokofy Demidov, pictured above, who among other things is notorious for having  his boots shone with black caviar.  It was rapidly realised, however, that relying on charitable donations alone would not guarantee the home’s longer term survival.  As a result it was decided to set up one of the first savings and loans banks in Russia, a proportion of the returns from which which would contribute towards the home’s expenses.  

Although it got off to a relatively slow start, the Saving Bank’s turnover grew dramatically between 1797 and 1843, increasing over one hundred times.  This rise took place during a period when the financial situation of some of the nobility, for various reasons, was in general deteriorating.  As a result the number of landowners looking to borrow money against their estates, and indeed against the value of the serfs who populated them, increased rapidly.

As one commentator noted (2) ‘Nobles apparently saw bank loans less as a means to acquire capital to improve their estates than as a way to cover the costs of increased consumption’.  Perhaps due to this, a related organization, the Loans Treasury, effectively a pawn broking business, was established. The declared aim of the Treasury was to provide ‘speedy help for those who fell into need and for the protection of all from profligate relations’. To some extent this might be seen as a charitable end in itself. However, due to corrupt management  and a need to support landowners following the destruction of their property in the war of 1812, it seems that there was ultimately little in the way of profit from this enterprise available for the foundling home.

Goods of value deposited in return for hard cash at the establishment are recorded in the records as including: gold and silver, diamonds and other jewellery, furs and other clothes, snuffboxes, watches and other luxury goods. This catalogue certainly reflects the fact that the Russian nobility, at least in the 18th Century, included many of the the highest spenders in the whole of Europe.

The first recorded transaction of the Loans Treasury took place on 10th November 1775, when Lieutenant General Ivan Vasiliyevich Levashev deposited three funts of gold and a pood and three funts of silver in return for three thousand three hundred roubles in silver money.

Catherine’s financial establishments lasted into the reign of her grandson, Alexander ll.  The Loans Treasury was transferred in 1862 to the Ministry of Finance. I have not been able to discover the fate of the Savings and Loans Bank, but the Moscow Foundling Home itself was disbanded after the Revolution of 1917.

  1. D Filimonov, Ruskhii Arkhiv (1876) Vol, 1. Page 265-276. Kreditniye uchrezhdeniia moskovskago vospitatel’nago doma.
  2. George E Munro, Finance and Credit in the Eighteenth Century Russian Economy (1997) (can be sourced through jstor)

‘Keep my words forever’ a film about Osip Mandelstam

In May members of the GB-Russia Society enjoyed the opportunity to watch the extraordinary film by filmmaker, music producer and director, Roma Liberov:  Сохрани мою речь навсегда.  The film, the title of which can be translated as  ‘Keep my words forever,’ was created in memory of the life and work of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (1891 -1938).

Roma Liberov, was present at the event, and was able to give invaluable insight into both the technicalities of the film’s creation and the spirit that motivated him to make it.

In structure and form the film is not a traditional ‘bio-pic’, with ponderous interviews from invited ‘experts’, accompanied by a  series of dramatized scenes of the subject’s life played by actors. Instead, the film emerges as a unique and definitive work of art in its own right.

 Moving more or less chronologically, the film is split into a series of twenty parts, or ‘chapters’, relevant to a phase in the poet’s life. Each section, just a few minutes long, comprises a rich confluence of lines from Mandelstam’s verse,  contemporary Russian rap music, inventive animation, plus some beautiful and evocative static images of places of significance to the poet’s life and work.  So the viewer travels from the poet’s early days in Paris, Heidelberg and St Petersburg,  through a period in Armenia, exile in Voronezh, and finally to Samatikha, where the poet was staying with his wife when he was arrested for the second, and last, time.  At one level watching the film feels like looking into the pages of a family album, a curated collection of scraps and memories from the past overlaid with contemporary features, but in fact it has a more defined underlying structure.

Liberov explained that he based the film’s shape on the traditional form of an icon of the life of a saint, and indeed the short filmic snapshots are resonant of the tiny images showing the miracles and sufferings of the holy men of the past. An example can be seen in the picture of the saints of the Solovetsky Monastery below.  This particular structure does seem an appropriate way to frame episodes in the life of a man who can himself be regarded as a latter-day martyr.

It is Liberov’s contention that Mandelstam was unable to create within the constraints of the socialist realist imperative that demanded an artist should work bounded by parameters relevant to the ‘here and now’ of the soviet era. Mandelstam’s creative world in contrast embraced the whole scope of western culture, and although some of his poetry vividly portrays the specifics of the cold streets of Soviet Leningrad, it could not simply be confined to this.

The title Сохрани мою речь навсегда in itself implies the universal and eternal validity of Mandelstam’s work, but while the film contains many images redolent of western culture as a whole, pictures of the classical world for example, it also focusses on the specific events of the poets life. Thus it refers to the proximate cause of the poet’s well known, and ultimately fatal, clash with the regime. The words of ’the Stalin Epigram’, in which Mandelstam dared to ridicule and denigrate the Great Leader, are quoted in the film more than once, to appropriately sinister effect.

At around an hour and a half, the film proved to be a stimulating, moving and clear eyed tribute to a great poet. Liberov had arranged lucid English subtitles for the occasion, which for those of us with moderately competent Russian, were very helpful. The film is available to watch in Russian on  i-player.  Even without the benefit of subtitles, the evocative images and the inherent musicality of the Russian poetry, even when sometimes distorted by rap, make it well  worth watching by a non-Russian  audience.  You-tube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT888y9oNfk

Saints Zosima (left) and Savvatiy (right) with their lives. The 16th century icon is now located in the Russian Museum, Saint-Petersburg, Russia.

Horse Diplomacy

Given her enthusiasm for all things English, it is not surprising that it was Catherine the Great who introduced Horse Racing in the English Style to Russia in the 1780’s, and it was only a matter of time before the sport became a vehicle for diplomatic exchange.

On at least two occasions in the 19th Century members of the Russian Royal Family, having enjoyed visits to English race courses,  donated prize money as a gesture of goodwill.  Both gifts have connections with races that still run today.

In 1839, following a particularly uncomfortable period in Anglo/Russian diplomatic relations, Nicholas 1st wishing to improve matters sent his son, the ill-fated future Alexander 2nd, on a state visit to England.  Despite initial misgivings the visit proved to be a success.  Victoria expressed herself to be ‘delighted’ with her visitor, who taught her to dance the Mazurka at Windsor Castle. Palmerston took the Grand Duke to Newmarket Races, where he made a donation to the Jockey Club.  It was decided that an annual race should be  named after him and the Cesarevich, as it is called, continues to be run at the course every October.

A less happy visit by a Russian royal took place in 1844 when the Emperor himself, Nicholas 1st, came to England.  Nicholas was a much more demanding guest, and his visit, while later considered an overall success, was more awkward.  Like his son, the Emperor was also taken to the races, this time to Ascot. Here he announced that he would provide an annual race prize of 500 guineas for as long as he reigned.  The new trophy was called The Emperor’s Plate, which also became the name of the race, although, unsurprisingly, during the Crimean War, the event reverted to being called the Gold Cup.

Gifts of racehorses for diplomatic reasons probably go back to Catherine’s time, and the practice persisted during the Soviet Era.  Simon Dixon, in his article about trends in horseracing in the 19th Century (Slavonic and Eastern European Review 2020), describes how in 1946 Stalin presented two Russian  thoroughbreds to W. Averell Harriman, the departing American Ambassador. Harriman had admired the animals in Red Square where they were taking part in a victory parade. The Russian leader sent the horses to America along with a Russian vet, a jockey and two grooms.  History does not seem to relate if the humans involved ever returned to Russia.

Controlling the corpse: the autocratic reaction to death

Berlin, demonstration after the murder of Alexey Navalny. 18th February 2024. Photograph: A Savin, Wikipedia

Following the murder of the opposition leader, Alexey NavaIny, the Russian security services have, until yesterday, been attempting not only to retain control of his body but also to dictate the nature of his funeral.

Such evidence of official paranoia is nothing new. The autocratic regime in Russia has regularly exerted pressure when the time comes to bury their opponents, real or imagined.  In a country where public demonstrations are routinely banned, a crowded funeral may offer a rare opportunity to express opposition to the state.  In my novel, Small Acts of Kindness, for example, I tell the true story of how the funeral of Chernov, a young impoverished officer, the cousin of the revolutionary Kondraty Ryleev, developed into just such a major display of mute opposition. 

Chernov’s funeral took place in the autumn of 1825.  Some twelve years later, when Alexander Pushkin was killed in a duel in January 1837, the emperor Nicholas l took an intense interest in the organization of his funeral and internment. A subsequent report from the corps of gendarmes to the Emperor clearly reflects government fears about public reaction. The document reads. ‘…it was intended to hold a ceremonial funeral service, many proposed to follow the coffin to the place of burial in Pskov province; finally rumours were heard that in Pskov itself the horses were to be unharnessed and the coffin dragged by people, the citizens of Pskov having been made ready for this. It would be difficult to decide whether all these honours related more to Pushkin the liberal than Pushkin the poet… Taking into consideration the views of many well thinking people that a similar, as it were popular expression of grief at Pushkin’s death would to some extent express an indecent sense of triumph for the liberals, higher authority recognized it as its duty, by measures of secrecy, to eliminate all paying of respects. ‘ (Quoted in T.J. Binyon, Pushkin, a biography, London 2002. p. 633)

On hearing that Pushkin was dying, Nicholas ordered that the poet’s papers be secured and examined, and his study sealed. In what turned out to be a fruitless attempt to limit attendance, the funeral service in St Petersburg was moved to a smaller church than originally planned, and students at the university were instructed to remain at their desks.  Moreover, when the time came to the transfer Pushkin’s body for burial in a monastery near family estates in Pskov, only the poet’s close friend, Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev, was permitted to accompany the coffin, which was concealed  from public view beneath baste matting and straw. A captain of gendarmes was assigned to accompany it and a special travel warrant issued.

The journey was undertaken at the gallop, and the small ensemble was closely monitored along the way.  The governor of  Pskov received a letter from Mordinov of the Third Section, the deputy to Count Benkendorf, in which he was reminded: ‘It is the sovereign emperor’s wish that you should prohibit any especial expression, any meeting, in a word, any ceremony, apart from those which…are usually performed on the burial of a nobleman.  I do not think it superfluous to mention that the funeral service has already taken place here.’ (Binyon, page 635.)

Ice on the Neva

Ice on the Neva

According to the Neva Delta Company website this winter the river Neva in St Petersburg  is likely to be frozen for longer than average. This is in marked contrast to recent years in which warmer temperatures have meant that sometimes the river remained ice free, and tourist boats have continued to ply their trade.

The frozen river almost becomes a character in its own right in my current work in progress, Fortune’s Price, which is set between 1830 and 1832.  Back in the early 19th century it seems that the river routinely froze every year. According to the physician, botanist and traveller, Robert Lyall, in ‘The Character of the Russians and a detailed history of Moscow’ published in Edinburgh in 1823: ‘From the experience of the last century, i.e. from 1718 to 1818, the ice of the Neva, at St. Petersburg, has never broken up sooner than the 22nd March (in 1723) and never later than he 30th April (in 1810).  During the same period the earliest time of its freezing was the 16th October (in 1805) and the latest the 12th December 9th (in 1772).’  

Thinking about the impact of the colder weather this year reminded me of a dramatic incident related by the artist, travel writer and conservative grandee Edward Tracy Turnerelli (1813 -1896) in his book ‘What I know of the late Emperor Nicholas’ (1855). While visiting the Russian capital during the thaw, Turnerelli inadvisedly risked crossing the Neva by boat while ice was still flowing down to the sea in great shards.  As a result his boat was trapped between two great blocks, and he thought that he was about to perish. He was not alone: ‘This the boatman seemed well aware of,’ he writes. ‘For he began calmly to make the sign of the cross, invoking all the saints in the Russian calendar, while with true Muscovite sang froid he said ‘Barinn! Niett nadejda! Nadobno militsa Bokh!’  (There is not hope master, let us pray to God to forgive our sins!)

A large crowd gathered on the bank to watch the incident. This attracted the attention of the Tsar, who was having his dinner.  He apparently flung his fork aside and immediately called out a company of military ‘pontoniers’ who ‘set to work with a marvellous activity. They cut with their hatchets a hole in the ice, placed a boat in it, then cut another, placing planks on these boats as they advanced and continuing this work, in less than a quarter of an hour, the bridge was finished.’

The emperor himself came down to the river bank to supervise the rescue and, on receiving the effusive thanks of the hapless Turnerelli, expressed himself delighted to have been able to help an Englishman.

Of course at that time relations between England and Russia were good, but by the time Turnerelli came to write his memoirs their deterioration had culminated in the Crimean War.  This meant that Turnerelli’s memoirs, which in many respects are a hagiography of Nicholas, are tinged with an element of regretful self-justification. The four or five personal encounters that he had with the autocrat had always been positive and he could not help but continue to admire him, despite the change in diplomatic circumstances.

Tram running on the ice, late 19th Century

Tram running on the ice. Late 19th Century postcard

Book Review: A Ransomed Dissident by Igor Golomstock

When I studied  20th century Russian literature some years ago the name of the Russian art historian Igor Golomstock (1929 -2017 ) came up from time to time, but I confess my recollection of him was rather hazy.

So I was pleased when his autobiographical work, A Ransomed Dissident, translated by Sara Jolly and Boris Dralyuk and published in 2019, was brought to my attention. Golomstock seemed to know everyone who was anyone in the art and literary world during the fascinating era of ‘the thaw’ in the later 1950’s and 1960’s, and he was also involved in the human rights movement in Russia. In 1972 he emigrated, and the later years of his life were spent in England where he taught at different universities, including Oxford and the University of Essex, He also worked for the BBC Russian Service.

I really wish that I had read Golomstock’s book while doing my course. He was a child during the purges of the 1930’s, but even during later years artists and academics were obliged to work in an uneasy, frustrating and sometimes frightening atmosphere, a time which the book brings vividly to life. Golomstock’s comments on individuals, both artists and others, are illuminating, and his discussion of the rivalry and squabbles among soviet dissidents quite riveting at times. I was particularly engaged by his close association with the writer Andrey SInyavsky (1925 – 1997) who, with Yury Daniel (1925-1988), was tried in 1965 for ‘Anti-Soviet agitation’ under the Criminal Code. The trial and sentencing of these two men were often mentioned darkly by our lecturer, who never really elaborated the story. It was particularly satisfying therefore to learn what happened from someone who was not just there, but who himself got into trouble for refusing to co-operate at the trial.

Part of Golomstock’s early career was spent as a researcher and curator at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. His reminiscences reminded me of our own wonderful visit to the museum in 2019 when we accompanied the exhibits from Gainsborough’s House to the first exhibition dedicated to Thomas Gainsborough in Russia.

The translation of A Ransomed Dissident is unobtrusive and elegant, and the distinctive voice of the author reaches the reader clearly and affectingly.  As one individual’s perspective of a seminal era in Russian artistic history Golomstock’s book is highly recommended for any reader who is interested in the period, and would be an invaluable supplement for those studying 20th century Russian literature and history.