Former People The Final Days of The Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith (2012)

I offer my great thanks to Max u for providing me with the gift card that allowed me to read this wonderful book

Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith is a magnificent work, chronicling in superb detail what happened to the two million members of the Russian aristocracy as a result of the Russian Revolution.  I have been interested in Late Czarist history for a very long time (I am still holding my Trans-Siberian Railroad Bonds).  I love the great Russian writers.   I pictured ex-Russian counts working as waiters in Paris or countesses living in style on the Italian Rivera on jewels smuggled out of the country.  I knew the Czar and his family were executed, of course.  I knew Ruffington Boussweau had extensive contact with Prince Felix Yousepoff both before and after the revolution.  After reading Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith I realizd how superficial my understanding of this period was.

Here are some of the things I learned from Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith.  I have always had  a romantic admiration for the cause of the White Russians, fighting to defeat the communists and then holding on to the dream of restoring the old regime while living in exhile.  I was deeply shocked, though I should have realized this, that the White Russians were extremely Anti-Semetic.  They blamed the Jews for the revolution and undertook murderous pograms in which thousands were hung.  They butchered whole villages if they suspected the inhabitants were supportive of the communists.  My admiration for the White Rusśians is over.

I learned the Russian Revolution was very much supported by members of aristocratic families.  Only aristocratic young men had the educational background to develop the ideological structure to support revolution.   Many aristocrats, as Smith details, felt the system of terrible inequality in Russian was completely immoral.  

Smith tells his story by following what happened to members of two aristocratic families.  We very much see them as fully realized people.  The communists declared the two million people they classified as  Aristocracy as "former people", stripping them of all rights.  In order to live in a Russian city after the revolution you needed a ration card, former people were at first denied cards.  In the big cities most ate in government cafeterias and you needed a card to use these places.  The struggle for food became paramount in the lives of people used to living in pampered luxury.

Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy explains how many, probably most, former people met their deaths through execution, disease, killed in  wars, or disease.  A number were helped by serfs they once owned.  The communist government did not have nearly enough educated people to run the society they were trying to create so many ex-aristocrats found givernment work.  Many hid or denounced their past alliances.  

What emerges so powerfully in Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy is the sheer will of the ex-aristocrats to survive.  Survivors found ways to continue on with life, couples married, babies were born.  Many did leave Russia but it was not an easy choice to make.  There love for their country and heritage was very deep.

Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith is a marvelous  book.  Anyone into Russian history and culture will be very glad to have  read this work. 

You can find information about the author and his other books on his webpage

http://www.douglassmith.info/books/former-people

He is working on a biography of Gregory Rasputin and I am looking forward to reading that one day.

Mel u

With assistance from Ambrosia Boussweau