Time of Troubles

Among the few diaries available from inside early Soviet Russia none approaches Iurii V. Got'e's in sustained length of coverage and depth of vivid detail. Got'e was a member of the Moscow intellectual elite--a complex and unusually observant man, who was a professor at Moscow University and one of the most prominent historians of Russia at the time the revolution broke out. Beginning his first entry with the words Finis Russiae, he describes his life in revolution-torn Moscow from July 8, 1917 through July 23, 1922--nearly the entire period of the Russian Revolution and Civil War up to the advent of the New Economic Policy. This remarkable chronicle, published here for the first time, describes the hardships undergone by Got'e's family and friends and the gradual takeover of the academic and professional sectors of Russia by the new regime. Got'e was in his mid-forties when he wrote the diary. At first he felt that Bolshevism meant complete doom for Russia, but eventually his ardent patriotism led him to accept the Bolsheviks' role in preserving the integrity of the Russian state. The diary was discovered in 1982 in the Hoover Institution Archives, in the papers of Frank Golder, to whom Got'e himself had entrusted it in 1922. It is translated literally and unabridged, with annotations by Terence Emmons. The introduction by Professor Emmons places the diary clearly in the context of Got'e's life and scholarly career.

Originally published in 1988.

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