The Philosophy Steamer

Book excerpt: In 1922, Lenin personally drew up a list of some 160 undesirable intellectuals mostly philosophers, academics, scientists and journalists to be deported from the new Soviet State. Were going to cleanse Russia once and for all he wrote to Stalin, whose job it was to oversee the deportation. Two ships sailed from Petrograd that autumn, taking Old Russias eminent men and their families away to what would become permanent exile in Berlin, Prague and Paris. Lesley Chamberlain creates a rich portrait of this chilling historical moment, evoked with immediacy through the journals, letters, and memoirs of the exiles.