Lenin's Private War

Book excerpt: In the autumn of 1922, Lenin personally drew up a list of some 220 "undesirable" intellectuals - mostly philosophers, academics, scientists, and journalists - to be deported before the creation of the Soviet Union in December that year. Two ships sailed from Petrograd that autumn, taking around seventy of these eminent men and their families away to what became permanent exile in Berlin, Prague, and Paris. Lenin's Private War tells the story of these writers, journalists, and scholars expelled from their homeland. It describes the world they left behind, and the emigre communities they were forced to join. Lesley Chamberlain paints a rich portrait of this chilling historical moment using the journals, letters, and memoirs of those involved. Lenin's Private War also tells the story of the fate of ideas: not just those of Lenin, but also of the men forced to leave their homeland. Men like Nicholas Berdyaev, Semyon Frank, and Sergei Bulgakov made unique contributions to the intellectual life of the twentieth century through their work on creativity and faith. They perpetuated core Russian cultural traditions that were banned in the Soviet Union and incomparably deepened Western understanding of Russian history and culture.