Caught by the Revolution. Living Voices of Witnesses to the Fall of the Russian Empire

Spring 1917. Petrograd is boiling over—meetings are resonating on Nevsky, flags and orders are changing. In this whirlwind are foreigners—journalists, diplomats, engineers, governesses, soldiers. They write letters and diaries, unaware that their recordings will become living testimonies of the last days of tsarist Russia.

An English nurse, who survived the sinking of the Titanic, is now saving the wounded on the streets of the city. Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst arrives in Russia to meet with the fighters of the Women's Death Battalion led by Maria Bochkareva. Journalists, diplomats, and engineers observe how history is being written before their eyes—some with delight, others with horror and confusion. Some see in this the birth of a new era, others a senseless destruction, and still others try simply to live another day and maintain their human dignity.

On the streets of the city—robberies, panic, reprisals, and executions. “Women on the street had their shoes taken off their feet, men—clothes… the crowd surrounded the thieves and beat them to death.” “Those cadets who surrendered were lined up and thrown into the water.” In these accidental lines from witnesses is a sense of the end of an era, as the familiar world collapses literally before their eyes.

Drawing on forgotten archives and little-known testimonies, Helen Rappaport weaves together dozens of voices into a single narrative—an anxious, poignant, and vivid one. This is a report from the past, where each witness sees their piece of catastrophe, and together they form a panorama of a dying empire.