‘A leatherneck reports’, part 1: The correspondence of lieutenant general James Carson Breckinridge, USMC, assistant us naval attache to Petrograd, 1916–17

Abstract

Lieutenant General James Carson Breckinridge, USMC, (1877–1942) a veteran and well‐respected Marine Corps officer during the first four decades of the twentieth century, had the distinct honor of being one of only a handful of US military officers with an intimate knowledge of Russian history and civilization. His personal papers, on repository at the Marine Corps University Archives, Quantico, Virginia, contain reports, observations, newspaper clippings and articles dealing with Russian affairs, as well as his own reflections of events then ongoing in Russia and afterwards. In his position as the Assistant US Naval Attache to the US Embassy in Petrograd prior to and during the February 1917 Revolution, Breckinridge served in Russia at a pivotal time in US‐Russian relations. From the vantage point of the US Embassy in Petrograd and later from consulates in Christiania (Oslo, Norway), Stockholm, and for a short while Copenhagen, Breckinridge's letters, mainly to his mother, reflect the hectic days in the Russian capital as the Tsar abdicated, Kerensky's government fell, and the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky assumed control of the city of Petrograd and then the country.