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Epic in scope, precise in detail, and heart-breaking in its human drama, Former People is the first book to recount the history of the aristocracy caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of Stalin's Russia. Filled with chilling tales of looted palaces and burning estates, of desperate flights in the night from marauding peasants and Red Army soldiers, of imprisonment, exile, and execution, it is the story of how a centuries'-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the Tsar and Empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia.
Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class―so-called "former people" and "class enemies"―overcame the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families―the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns―it reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on.
Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia's most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.
- Sales Rank: #273106 in Books
- Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Published on: 2012-10-02
- Released on: 2012-10-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.26" h x 1.60" w x 6.15" l, 1.74 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 496 pages
- Great product!
From Booklist
It is a daunting task to elicit sentiments of nostalgia or even regret for the demise of a social class that owed its elite status to birth rather than merit. Smith, a historian and former analyst of Russian affairs for the State Department, succeeds admirably in this wide-ranging and often moving account of the fate of the Russian nobility, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the Stalinist era. His narrative moves seamlessly from a general survey of the nobility to the deeply personal and tragic story of two noble families, the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns. Smith portrays the nobility as a class as being surprisingly diverse, encompassing non-Russians, religious minorities, and relatively impoverished families. He demolishes the facile caricature of the idle, decadent abuser of peasants, since many nobles had admirable records of service to the state in the military and in government bureaucracy. This is a superbly written and emotionally wrenching ode to a class doomed by the flow of history. --Jay Freeman
Review
“Stunning and brilliantly narrated.” ―Rosemary Sullivan, The Wall Street Journal
“[An] excellent history . . . A sobering tale of the complexities of revolution, told with clarity and sympathy.” ―The Independent
“Absorbing . . . How could one ever think that these people were monsters? They were gallant souls; and Smith's book memorialises them beautifully.” ―Mark Le Fanu, Spear's
“Smith re-creates what [the Russian nobility] experienced with an intimacy that brings the whole history of these years vividly and grotesquely alive.” ―Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
“Smith has performed a real service in drawing attention to this widely overlooked segment of the Russian population and the horrifying persecutions its members endured. His book inspires awe and pity in equal measure, and expands our understanding of a forgotten people. It's hard to believe that this it he first book of its kind devoted to the 10 percent of White Russians who remained in the society Union after the revolution and civil war and we can hope it will lead to others.” ―Michael Scammell, The New York Review of Books
“With urgency and precision, [Smith] chronicles the fate of the nobility from the dawn of the revolution . . . He is invested in their (former) cause, and narrates the events of their lives with passion . . . Former People is a thorough, extensively sourced history, and also something of a spiritual restitution.” ―Yelena Akhtiorskaya, The New Republic
“Although many of the aristocrats thought the end of their caste 'obvious and unavoidable,' few foresaw the destruction of a way of life. Smith's engaging and, at times, heartbreaking account is an essential record of that loss.” ―The New Yorker
“Former People is ultimately an incredibly readable, vivid, emotional human story of survival, accommodation, and reconciliation.” ―Sean Guillory, New Books Network
“Engrossing . . . with richly detailed event and anecdote.” ―Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times
“An engaging and absorbing book.” ―Jennifer Siegel, The Wall Street Journal
“A remarkable, deeply affecting book.” ―David Walton, GuideLive
“Smith examines the much-neglected 'fate of the nobility in the decades following the Russian Revolution,' when they were sometimes given the Orwellian title 'former people.' The author of several books on Russia (The Pearl; Working the Rough Stone), Smith focuses on three generations of two families: the Sheremetsevs of St. Petersburg and the Golitsyns of Moscow. He begins by showing their extravagant wealth before the revolution; in the late 19th century, Count Dmitri Sheremetsev owned 1.9 million acres worked by 300,000 serfs. From the 1917 Bolshevik revolution until Stalin's death in 1953, these families and others suffered, at best, severe persecution and impoverishment; at worst, murder by mobs or the secret police, or a slow death in the gulag. In his sprawling but well-paced narrative, Smith tells many memorable stories, including one of Vladimir Golitsyn's son-in-law, who hid the fact that he'd been sentenced to death from his wife, who'd been allowed a three-day visit. Smith also provides fascinating background information, such as the Bolsheviks' jaundiced view of 'decadent' Western culture. Maxim Gorky said the foxtrot, popular among nobles during the 1920s and early '30s, 'fostered moral degeneracy and led inexorably to homosexuality.' This is an anecdotally rich, highly informative look at decimated, uprooted former upper-class Russians.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“When the Bolshevik Revolution came in 1917, the new order began transforming aristocrats into paupers, exiles and corpses―a transformation that consumed decades. Smith, a former U.S. diplomat and authority on the Soviets and author of several previous works (The Pearl: A Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the Great’s Russia, 2008, etc.), takes a different approach to revolutionary history, focusing on the fallen class: Who were they? What had their lives been like? What happened to them? The author follows two aristocratic families (later, they intermarried), the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns, showing the splendor in which they lived and then the squalor into which they declined. The author is deeply sympathetic to their fates. Although he states that the aristocracy had, of course, flourished on the servitude of others, he tells such wrenching, emotional stories about his characters that it’s easy to forget who once wore the silken slippers. Smith’s research is remarkably thorough in its range and detail, so much so that readers may feel overwhelmed by such powerful surges of suffering. Searches, arrests, firings, confiscations of property, internal exile, imprisonments, tortures, executions, desecration of graves―these and other grim experiences Smith chronicles in his compelling narrative. He mentions significant historical events, but his intent is to show how these events affected his characters. He portrays with brutal clarity the truth of Orwell’s Animal Farm: A new aristocracy―a political one―emerged to enjoy the benefits of living on the labor of others.
Sobering stories about the politics of power―its loss, its gain―and the deep human suffering that inevitably results.” ―Kirkus (starred review)
“Sobering stories about the politics of power--its loss, its gain--and the deep human suffering that inevitably results.” ―Kirkus (starred review)
“Absolutely gripping, brilliantly researched, with a cast of flamboyant Russian princesses and princes from the two greatest noble dynasties and brutal Soviet commissars, The Former People is an important history book--but it's really the heartbreaking human story of the splendors and death of the Russian aristocracy and the survival of its members as individuals.” ―Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem and Catherine the Great and Potemkin
“Douglas Smith's Former People is a passionate and vivid story of the destruction of an entire class--the Russian aristocracy--during the Bolshevik Revolution. What the Communists began with the nobility, they were to continue with writers, poets, artists, peasants, and workers. Smith restores the dignity, pathos, and endurance of a vanished and fabled elite.” ―Michael Ignatieff, author of The Russian Album; professor, Munk School, University of Toronto.
“Former People provides a fascinating window onto a lost generation. Filled with intimate detail, drama, and pathos, this is a book as much about renewal and reinvention as about the end of an era.” ―Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and A World on Fire: an Epic History of Two Nations Divided
About the Author
Douglas Smith is an award-winning historian and translator and the author of three previous books on Russia. Before becoming a historian, he worked for the U. S. State Department in the Soviet Union and as a Russian affairs analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.
Most helpful customer reviews
117 of 118 people found the following review helpful.
Survivors From A Vanished World
By John D. Cofield
Douglas Smith's engrossing history of the fate of the Russian aristocracy after 1917 focusses primarily on two families, the Golitsyns and the Sheremetevs. They lived opulent lives in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and on various country estates, taking leading roles in the Tsar's government and in the military, patronizing artists and musicians, and travelling in private rail carriages, limousines, and the earliest airplanes. This charmed world came crashing to an end in 1917, with the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II and the subsequent seizure of power by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Many nobles fled from Russia, while others died or were murdered during the Russian Civil War and the earliest days of the Soviet Union. But many survived and remained in their motherland, hoping that the turmoil would run its course and that some sort of return to the Old Regime would occur. Instead, things went from bad to worse as Lenin was succeeded by Stalin and the nobility, now known as "former people", became scapegoats for the new government as it struggled to create a socialist utopia. Counts and Princes were sentenced to long years of penal servitude in the gulag, often without ever being told what crimes they were supposed to have committed, and their families eked out a bare living, sometimes in a corner of their old estates and palaces, sometimes in Siberian or Arctic exile.
I found this book endlessly fascinating. I've studied Russian history for many years, but my understanding of what had happened to the Russian aristocracy after the Revolution was that most had either been killed or forced into exile. I was surprised to read about nobles who managed to live on good terms with Bolshevik commissars, and I was impressed with the strength and courage of others who survived years of imprisonment. Although they had to discard their titles and hide their family history, they never forgot their heritage, even though they continually warned their children not to talk about it. Among the large number of pictures are some that I found particularly affecting, primarily those from after the Revolution including the pictures of a noble couple's wedding reception in 1921, in which the guests all look threadbare and tense and the beautifully decorated table can't hide the fact that there was little or nothing to eat and drink.
The book primarily covers the Revolution and the next twenty years or so, with shorter chapters dealing with World War II, in which nobles served in the Soviet armies just as their forebears had served Russia in previous conflicts, and the modern era, in which it has once again become relatively safe to openly display an aristocratic heritage. In many ways Former People is also the history of the Soviet Union itself, covering the period from its brutal yet hopeful beginnings, through the chaos and horror of its forcible industrialization and militarization under Stalin, and finally its long decline and ultimate fall. Besides the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns there are many other stories of other noble families and individuals, and for the two principal families Smith has provided helpful family trees.
Former People is a well written and thorough study of how a group of people who before 1917 were stereotyped as frivolous bon vivants managed to cope with and survive the harshest change of fortune possible, doing so with dignity,determination, and strong religious faith.
45 of 45 people found the following review helpful.
An engrossing story about the fate of two Russian noble families
By Nina B.
This is a valuable contribution to the study of Russian history as Douglas Smith has delved into a topic that has been largely ignored - the fate of individual noble families in post-Revolutionary Russia. In his book, Smith focuses on two of the most prominent and important families in Russian history - the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns. Smith effectively combines general history and the experiences of individual family members during the Revolution, the Civil War and the Stalin era to create an involving and fascinating account.
61 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
I could not put this book down!
By Robert Atchison
It just arrived two days ago and I finished it out in two days. I was absolutely absorbed in it and could not put it down. What an incredible tragedy the revolution and its aftermath was for Russia. I had thought I would not have a great deal of sympathy for those in the nobility (and middle classes) who chose to stay behind after the Bolsheviks took over, but here in this book their stories come alive. I have to say I am embarrassed my prior ignorance. I recommend this book with five stars.
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