Welcome to Russian History Retold, Episode 234, The Russian Elite After the Revolution,

Part 1.

Last time, I shared my interview with William Clark of Grey Histories about Catherine

Two episodes back, though, we finished the five-part series on the tumultuous year of 1917.

Today, we cover an aspect of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution with a topic of what happened to the Russian Elite.

Today's episode will focus on those who left Russia after the Revolution.

In contrast, the following episode will focus on those sad people who stayed.

In researching the fate of the wealthy people of high society in Russia before and after the Russian Revolution, I came upon two literary works.

The first is After the Revolution, Russian exiles in Paris from the Belapoc through the Revolution in war, by Helen Rappaport.

This book covers the tens of thousands of immigrants who made their way to Paris, France, after the Revolution and Civil War.

The second book, My Author Douglas Smith, is entitled Former People, The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy.

This tells the story of those poor souls who remained in Russia and the new Soviet Union after the Revolution.

My other sources are the tales I was told by my family and their friends who I got to know while growing up in the Russian Orthodox community in New York City.

It also includes my month in Cal, France, in 1972, at the camp next to the Russian Orthodox Church there.

And there, I met a wide array of children of Russian emigres from all over Europe, as well as some of those who made it out of Russia with some of their wealth intact.

Before we get into the aftermath of the Revolution, it is essential to know a little bit about the Russian aristocracy and why the Bolsheviks, and for that matter, most average Russians at the time, detested them.

As the grandson of one of those aristocratic families, it took quite a bit for me to come to the grips with their incredible wealth, which they lost all in World War II, and their views of the ordinary Russian.

There was a bit of a, how would you put it, disconnect between those with more money than they knew how to spend, as you shall see, and the abject poverty of most of their fellow citizens.

The Russian nobility class had its start in the 14th century, after the Mongol invasion, and shortly before the Yoke had been overthrown.

The Russian word for nobility, Varyanskvo, derives from Slavonic dvor, meaning the court of a prince or duke or kias, and later of the Tsar or emperor.

By 1914, there were about 1.9 million members of the nobility class in Russia, representing a little more than 1% of the population.

My mother was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in the early 1920s. Her family was exceedingly wealthy. She lived in a large mansion with marble staircases, and a bevy of servants to take care of her every want and need.

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