War, Revolution, and Peace in Russia: The Passages of Frank Golder, 1914-1927

Bertrand M. Patenaude, Terrence Emmons

Hoover Press, Apr 26, 2023 - Political Science - 400 pages

The American historian Frank Golder (1877–1929) was an eyewitness to some of the most historic events in modern Russian history. He was in St. Petersburg when tsarist Russia entered World War I in 1914. He returned to the city—now Petrograd—eleven days before the fall of Nicholas II in 1917 and witnessed the February Revolution that overthrew Russia's autocracy. He served as a relief worker and unofficial political observer for the US government during the Great Famine of 1921. In later visits, he beheld the changes in Soviet society after the death of Lenin. Golder faithfully recorded his impressions in diaries and letters, now in the holdings of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. His writings from Russia detail the dramatic events he observed, from the final years of the Romanov dynasty to the beginnings of Stalinism. Among the events he describes are encounters with key figures in the Russian Revolution, backdoor negotiations between Washington and Moscow on the issues of trade and political recognition, and meetings with prominent Russian ÉmigrÉs from which learned the fate of the old-regime intelligentsia. Golder's writings provide a firsthand account of the tumultuous events that transformed Russian politics, society, and culture.

Contents

• CHAPTER: 3
• RUSSIA GOES TO WAR: 13
• CHAPTER: 29
• CHAPTER THREE: 89
• CHAPTER FOUR: 161
• BOLSHEVISM AT A CROSSROADS: 237
• 1927: 248
• CHAPTER SEVEN: 339
• APPENDIX: 347
• INDEX 1353: 353

Popular passages

Page 46 - Yes, we need a republic, but at its head there should be a good tsar.""1 Similarly, Frank Golder noted during March: "Stories are being told of soldiers who say they wish a republic like England, or a republic with a tsar. One soldier said he wanted to elect a president and when asked, 'Whom would you elect?‎

Page xvii - Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 19171919 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963), 28-31, 105-106.‎

Page 151 - Production is conditioned upon the safety of life, the recognition of firm guarantees of private property, the sanctity of contracts and the rights of free labor.‎

Page 50 - Colder talked with one such worker, "an old muzhik," in mid-March, who "said it was a sin to overthrow the emperor, since God had placed him in power. It may be that the new regime will help people on this earth, but they will surely pay for it in the world to come."49 The patrimonial conception of the tsar - as the "master (khoziain) of the Russian land" - also found expression in these fears.‎

Page 329 - Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties: names to be remembered (Cambridge, 1972), pp.‎

Page x - ... Czech foreign policy. In 1938 Czechoslovakia succumbed to the threat of simultaneous invasion along all its frontiers. BIBLIOGRAPHY The foregoing study is based primarily on original documents of the Paris Peace Conference deposited in the Hoover Institute and Library on War, Revolution and Peace, the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Historical Research Division of the Department of State, and the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. Foremost...‎

Page 150 - John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 19171950 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953), pp.‎

Page 125 - I entered I was greeted by the guard which was dressed in the uniform of the old Imperial Guard. Why this relic is preserved I do not know. The uniform hung on these poor peasant soldiers and they behaved like farmers, smoking cigarettes on duty, but the uniform was there. We had three tickets, one for Walker, one for me, and one for the representative of the government, for even here we are followed and looked after. There is only one place where we can go alone but I will not name it. We had places...‎

Page 275 - ... they passed by me during those hard times. The believer knew that he was doing penance for his sins and for those of Russia and that Heaven held a reward for him and a better future for Russia; the unbeliever suffered and rebelled like a dumb beast. The one became softened and the other hardened. You have no idea how many of the intelligentsia who formerly reviled God are now turning to Him with the prayer, 'Have mercy on me, a sinner.‎

About the author

Terence Emmons, professor emeritus of Russian history at Stanford University, is the author and editor of numerous books on Russian history, including Time of Troubles: The Diary of Iurii Vladimirovich Got'e (1988), based on the original handwritten diary of a Moscow historian found among Frank Golder's papers in the Hoover Library & Archives.

Bertrand M. Patenaude is the author of The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (2002) and coauthor of Bread + Medicine: American Famine Relief in Soviet Russia, 1921–1923 (2023).

Bibliographic information

• Title: War, Revolution, and Peace in Russia: The Passages of Frank Golder, 1914-1927; Hoover Archival Documentaries
• Authors: Bertrand M. Patenaude, Terrence Emmons
• Publisher: Hoover Press, 2023
• ISBN: 081799193X, 9780817991937
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / World / Russian & Soviet