Ровно сто лет назад была расстреляна царская семья. Читая книгу Дугласа Смита, можно посчитать, что Николаю II еще повезло. «Последние дни» русской аристократии растянулись на десятилетия, но история дворянства (почти 2 млн. человек на конец XIX века) была одним из многочисленных «белых пятен» в истории CCCР, о ней нельзя было говорить, и по этой причине она не существовала, словно была стерта и исчезла. «Бывшие люди», пожалуй, первая в мире книга, посвященная исследованию судеб российских дворян после революции. Уточним, что в основном речь в ней идет о трех больших фамилиях – Голицыных, Трубецких и Шереметевых, однако в силу их размера, знатности, влиятельности и богатства экс-князья и графы в наибольшей мере ощутили прелести контакта с ненавидящим их режимом. Выжили единицы, и, пожалуй, стоило сразу бежать, но существовал узнаваемый нюанс. С началом Первой мировой войны многие дворяне перевели капиталы из заграницы в Россию в знак готовности поддержать хозяйство страны в военное время. Вывод капитала из страны считался непатриотичным. К началу революции лишь очень немногие дворяне располагали заграничными капиталами, на которые могли рассчитывать.

According to the author, this book is the first in any language to examine the fate of the Russian nobility after the revolution of 1917. He has gained access to the diaries and letters of various members of two noble families. These sources are particularly pertinent in the first half of the book, which deals with the Bolshevik coup and its immediate aftermath. He has also plowed through an enormous amount of reports and petitions to trace the ultimate destinies of various "former people" in Stalin's persecutions in the 1930s, which is the main topic of the second half of the book.

The first half was in my opinion more interesting than the second, perhaps because the members of these families still had the leisure and comfort to write down their thoughts and experiences in the early years of the tumultuous revolution. The author ties the political twists and turns of 1917 closely to individual stories, and explains why Lenin's political ideology of liquidation of the nobility worked in his favor.

By the second half of the book, which focuses mostly on the 1930s, the members of the noble families were already leading a meagre existence. Here the author sticks closely to the stories of various individuals without saying much about Stalin's totalitarian state or the reasons that may have motivated his mad totalitarianism. The terror needed a target and it's clear that the former nobility remained in the bullseye as long as it could be identified. However, the author could in my opinion have intertwined personal accounts more strongly with historical events. I would in fact recommend the second half of this book to be read in conjunction with a more general work on Stalin's Russia just to clarify the context.

Nevertheless, this is a book worth reading. It provides a good number of biographic portraits and serves as a reminder of the tragic individual fates of millions of victims unjustly killed in the Soviet Union in these years.

Durante las primeras décadas del siglo xx, en la vorágine provocada por la Revolución y la transición a la nueva sociedad soviética, la elite aristocrática de Rusia fue violentamente perseguida y desposeída de todos sus privilegios y riquezas. Centrándose en la suerte que corrieron dos grandes familias que trataron de sobrevivir y adaptarse al mundo nuevo y hostil de la Unión Soviética —los Sheremétev y los Golítzin, que durante siglos habían estado al servicio del zar y del imperio—, El ocaso de la aristocracia rusa relata escalofriantes historias personales de sufrimiento y capacidad de resistencia ante el terror y la represión. Convertida en «enemiga de clase», la aristocracia rusa pasó de vivir en un esplendor extravagante y una riqueza fastuosa a padecer el acoso de los comisarios bolcheviques, la cárcel, el exilio y las ejecuciones sumarias. ( )

Russia is such an interesting and almost mysterious country. This book makes a sometimes shadowy time in history come alive and tells stories of people who were long forgotten.

I sometimes struggle with books about the guy on top being overthrown by the little guy. The way the Russian peasants lived was atrocious, and the high glitz and glamour of the Russian Aristocracy makes it even more so. However, should people be punished for an excess that they didn't create? Should they pay for it with their lives? I'm not so sure. While this book can't answer that question (what book could) it does give real food for thought in an easy to read manner. ( )

Douglas Smith has written a fascinating and informative account of the end of the Russian aristocracy during the early twentieth century. The story of how an entire class of people were subjected to brutal and often arbitrary repression is heart-breaking - even more so as Smith focuses on two families: the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns whose personal stories bring a human perspective to the end of an era. Yet, not all the events are so grim: often there are glimmers of hope, love, and simple pleasures that provide some comfort amid the terror of Communist Russia.

Smith has used unprecedented access to family archives and utilises a number of important secondary sources too. This has allowed him to write one of the first books on this subject ever. This book is epic in scope and yet intimate in detail and is illuminating for the resilience of those described therein, and their perspective on the most tumultuous forty years of Russian history. ( )