This is the first in a series of posts about Anglo-Russian relations in the 1910s and 1920s, exploring themes and stories connected to my book, The Secret Twenties: British Intelligence, the Russians and the Jazz Age (published by Granta, September 2017).
Nicholas II, pictured in 1895, still young and perhaps hopeful early in his reign.
A century ago this week, Russia found herself in a state of turmoil with all her society, everyone from princes to peasants, frantically struggling to work out what the Tsar’s sensational abdication meant for them. Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor of All the Russias, had clung doggedly to his throne for more than twenty-two years, offering only a minimum of concessions to those of his subjects who wanted a fairer society while punishing many who dared to campaign for basic freedoms and a less autocratic regime. Revolution had long been prophesied but, when it came, it was nonetheless a great shock. Hundreds of years of unbroken one-person rule suddenly ended and the future was riven with insecurity.
This sense of uncertainty…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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