Book 98: "Memoirs of a British Agent" by R.H. Bruce Lockhart
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 13:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeHe is, however, good-natured. His enthusiasm is infectious, his pride in the revolution unbounded. "We are only doing what you have done centuries ago, but we are trying to do it better - without the Napoleon and without the Cromwell. People call me a mad idealist, but thank God for the idealists in this world. And at that moment I was prepared to thank God with him.
R.H. Bruce Lockhart was a diplomat who was posted to Moscow before and during the Russian Revolution, and his book was a world-wide bestseller when it was published in 1932, as he had first-hand contact with the famous names of both revolutions and was almost executed for spying.
His father sent him to university in Germany in the hope that he would actually do some work (he thought his son would spend all his time
playing sport if he went to Oxford or Cambridge), which led to him becoming fluent in French and German. After a stint working for his uncle at tea-planting in Malaya (he came home almost dead of fever - or possibly poison - after a scandalous affair with a local Prince's ward), he took the Foreign Office exams for the consular service.
By 1912 he was Vice-Consul in pre-World War I Moscow, where most of the other British residents were Lancastrians working in the cotton industry. After another affair led to him being sent back to London, he was sent back to Russia when the first revolution broke out, with the futile task of trying to keep Russia in the war. He was friends with Kerensky, the idealistic leader of the first revolutionary government, whose hopes of a revolution without a Napoleon or Cromwell were crushed when the Bolsheviks took over after the second revolution. A truly fascinating book by a man who at times seems very critical and dismissive of others, but also sees his own flaws and errors of judgement.
R.H. Bruce Lockhart was a diplomat who was posted to Moscow before and during the Russian Revolution, and his book was a world-wide bestseller when it was published in 1932, as he had first-hand contact with the famous names of both revolutions and was almost executed for spying.
His father sent him to university in Germany in the hope that he would actually do some work (he thought his son would spend all his time
playing sport if he went to Oxford or Cambridge), which led to him becoming fluent in French and German. After a stint working for his uncle at tea-planting in Malaya (he came home almost dead of fever - or possibly poison - after a scandalous affair with a local Prince's ward), he took the Foreign Office exams for the consular service.
By 1912 he was Vice-Consul in pre-World War I Moscow, where most of the other British residents were Lancastrians working in the cotton industry. After another affair led to him being sent back to London, he was sent back to Russia when the first revolution broke out, with the futile task of trying to keep Russia in the war. He was friends with Kerensky, the idealistic leader of the first revolutionary government, whose hopes of a revolution without a Napoleon or Cromwell were crushed when the Bolsheviks took over after the second revolution. A truly fascinating book by a man who at times seems very critical and dismissive of others, but also sees his own flaws and errors of judgement.
