Russian Noblewoman Tells of Happy Days

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1938, Page 12 (Supplement)

Russian Noblewoman Tells of Happy Days

MANY books Tiave been written j about Russia and the years following her defeat by Japan, and culminating in the fall of the monarchy and the inauguration of the Communist regime. Hardly any of them, however, has done more than touch on the country life of the gentry in those fateful years. This defect has now been remedied by the Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden in her latest book, "Before the Storm" (Macmillan). The Baroness is by no means old, but is okl enough to remember the people of nobility thirty and forty years ago, as well as the Imperial family and the brilliance of the Court and other functions in which they took part. Until she was fourteen she spent the four winter months of each year in St. Petersburg and the remaining eight with her grandfather, in the Central Volga district, a few miles from Kazan, one of the Russian towns where East meets West. She describee her recollections of the capital and life there, and then goes on to give us, in considerable detail, a vivid picture of the provincial household, their life in the country, the old-world customs of

the district, and Kazan and its Tartar element, adding to the Interest of it all with stories and anecdotes, some of them very amusing. She tells us that the gentry were by no means wealthy; the men of wealth were the merchants. Indeed, the gentry were so impoverished as the result of crop failures, and their ignorance of scientific farming, coupled with their living beyond their means, that they were obliged to dispose of their farms to the pe'asants, who were financed by the banks, thus creating the class of small farmers popularly known as kulaks. In the later chapters she describes her scliooldays, the accession of Nicholas, her debut, and, whilst still in her 'teens, her attendance at Court as one of the ladies-in-waiting to the Empress. Of both the Kmperor and the Kmpresa she speaks in the highest terms. In one chapter, which she devotes to the Emperor as she knew him, she describes him us "a real grand seigneur," and tells us that he had "an almost mystical sense of his duties." The book is written with charm, and without the slightest, political bias or suggestion of bitterness. It makes very real to us a world of men and women now dead and gone. There is an introduction by Sir John Squire.