Henderson , Robert Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for a Free Russia: A Revolutionary in the Time of Tsarism and Bolshevism (review)

Abstract

SEER, 97, 2, APRIL 2019 372 the situations that faced the protagonists in the Revolution and the Civil War, and the means by which they tackled them. In a very instructive conclusion Smith reflects on the reasons that brought down the autocracy and enabled the Bolsheviks to come to power. In his opinion, war played a major part. The strains caused by the First World War brought the Provisional Government to power, but its insistence on continuing hostilities cost it the popularity it had initially enjoyed. In this situation, the Bolsheviks, who promised peace, were able to respond to the popular mood. Smith is of the opinion that although ideology played some part in Bolshevik decision-making, it was not the only factor. He is surely right when he says that the Marxism of the Bolsheviks was a bundle of very diverse ideas and values. Of course the wide scope and time-framework of this book means that in many areas detail has had to be sacrificed. The 1917 revolution, for example, is covered in fifty pages, so that the treatment is on a rather general level. The scale of the narrative also necessarily makes the book heavily dependent on secondary sources. On the other hand, the endnotes to the text constitute a valuable bibliography of scholarly writing on all aspects of the subject area. Smith’s book is an ideal introduction to the history of the Russian Revolution, but it is more than that. A century after the events it describes, it is an indication that scholarship on the subject has matured, and that the Russian Revolution can be studied as objectively as any other episode in modern European history. The significance of Smith’s work ought to be that it sets the tone for all future writing on the subject. Department of Central and East European Studies James D. White University of Glasgow Henderson, Robert. Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for a Free Russia: A Revolutionary in the Time of Tsarism and Bolshevism. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2017. xii + 353 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £85.00; £28.99. Vladimir L´vovich Burtsev (1862–1942) is today best remembered as the ‘Sherlock Holmes of the Russian Revolution’ — the self-styled detective whose investigations led to the exposure of Evno Azef and numerous other police spies — and for his 1898 trial and conviction for incitement to regicide, a watershed moment in nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian relations. As Robert Henderson’s fine new biography reveals, however, such dramatic episodes were the norm throughout Burtsev’s remarkable life. In a revolutionary career spanningmorethanhalfacentury,hewasexiledtoSiberiatwice,foundhimself the most wanted man in Europe during his lengthy spells in emigration and REVIEWS 373 associated with almost all the parties of the left while joining none. After 1914, he embarked upon on the familiar path leading from revolutionary socialism via defencism to compromise with the White movement, all the while applying himself with utmost dedication to numerous literary, journalistic and scholarly enterprises. One of the most attractive features of this book is that it combines the readability of a popular historical page-turner with the fruits of the author’s meticulous scholarship. Henderson has marshalled a vast array of Russian, British, French and American archival documents (with particular weight given to secret intelligence files), and makes extensive use of contemporary memoirs and press sources. Divided into three parts, Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for a Free Russia is structured chronologically. Part One examines Burtsev’s life from the early 1880s up to 1905, including his conversion to radicalism, his first emigration, the numerous attempts made by both the Okhrana and European police forces to capture him and the events leading up to the 1898 trial. Part Two documents his activities between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, focusing especially on the counter-espionage work of his Paris-based ‘revolutionary detective agency’ (pp. 138–40 and passim), the Azef affair, his return to Russia following the outbreak of war in 1914 and role in the revolutionary events of 1917. Part Three details Burtsev’s opposition to the Bolsheviks after 1917 and the part of his career probably least familiar to historians: his work as a...