Welcome to Russian History Retold Episode 235, The Russian Elite After the Revolution

Part 2.

Last time we covered the Russian elites that made it out of the country after the revolution

and the Russian Civil War.

Today we will look at what happened to those who did not make it out or chose to stay

in the new Soviet Union.

My primary source of information for this episode is former people, the final days of

the Russian aristocracy by Douglas Smith.

One of the most critical comments that Smith makes is on the information about what happened

to the nobility.

While on a visit to Moscow in the spring of 2006, I searched the many drawers of the

card catalog devoted to the Great October Revolution at the Russian State Library.

The former Lenin Library, not fully online at the time, but could not find anything on

the nobility.

Surprised, I asked a librarian, why there was nothing in the catalog.

The look she gave me was of disbelief, as if I asked her who was buried in the Lenin

Mausoleum.

Shpa?

What?

She started the revolution in the nobility, of course not, because the revolution had nothing

to do with the nobility.

She instructed this clueless American historian.

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