Blood Red, Snow White (23 page)

We found a way.

FALLEN LEAVES

NICHOLAS, ALEXANDRA, OLGA, TATIANA, MARIA,
Anastasia and Alexei Romanov were shot by firing squad in the basement of the “Ipatiev House” in Ekaterinburg where they were being held, on the night of July 16, 1918. Alexei was still just thirteen, the age at which, according to Rasputin’s prediction, the boy’s haemophilia would be taken from him forever.

Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, remained leader of the Soviet state until his death in 1924.

Lev Davidovich, known as Trotsky, was originally a key player in the Revolution, but later fell foul of Stalin’s regime and was exiled. He was brutally murdered by a Spanish communist agent in Mexico in 1940.

Karl Radek, like Trotsky, was also persecuted by Stalin. He was exiled to Tobolsk and it is believed he died in an Arctic labor camp in 1939.

Vatslav Vorovsky was murdered in Switzerland in 1923.

Ants Piip, Estonian Minister, later Head of State, died in a prison camp in 1941.

Robert Bruce Lockhart returned to England and wrote several books of memoirs on the wave of his notoriety.

Arthur Ransome, along with Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, lived in Estonia and traveled extensively in the Baltic and later in China. They were eventually married on May 8, 1924, at the British Consulate in Reval, Estonia, now Tallinn.

Swallows and Amazons
, the first of Ransome’s famous adventure stories, was published in 1930.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

TO ANYONE OF MY GENERATION IN THE UK,
Arthur Ransome is an extremely well-known creator of books for children. His
Swallows and Amazons
books, the first of which was published in 1931, were essential reading for many. I loved those books, but the book of Ransome’s I loved the most was something he wrote long before, in 1916. Ransome wrote
Old Peter’s Russian Tales
as a way to introduce the wonderful fairy tales of Russia to British children, having fallen in love with them himself upon his move there as a foreign correspondent. That book, and an extraordinary true story, have inspired this one.

This is a work of fiction, but it is as closely based on the real events surrounding Ransome’s time in revolutionary Russia as I could make it. Nevertheless, in order to tell the story well I found it sensible to modify one or two things; for instance, there is no evidence that Ransome was present the night that Lockhart witnessed Rasputin’s infamous performance in the Yar. In more general terms I’ve used an author’s prerogative to make inferences where the known facts dry up, and in my defense I’ll simply say that this isn’t a biography and shouldn’t read like one. In addition, like many authors, a few elements of Ransome’s own account of his life can also be demonstrated to depart from the strict facts from time to time. I don’t think that matters. The essence of this remarkable life remains untouched, and for those who wish to find out more, an excellent biography of Ransome was published shortly after my novel was first released in the UK in 2007. Roland Chambers and I met during the course of our mutual research. His book,
The Last Englishman,
provides the latest information known about Ransome the spy and addresses the question of whether he was responsible for helping to fund the nascent communist party in Britain immediately after the First World War.

The vast majority of incidents in the book, however, happened just as I have told them, showing as so often that fact is stranger than fiction. When I came across Ransome’s story it was simply too good not to tell: in 2005, after the National Archives in the UK released the Secret Service files on his time in Russia and beyond, the new information they revealed added only more mystery to this episode of an amazing life. There’s more about the files, as well as a handful of the memos and telegrams about Ransome contained in them, in the appendix. I’m indebted to the National Archives for their permission to reproduce them here. I would also like to thank Jane Nissen for the permission to borrow from Ransome’s beautiful introduction to
Old Peter’s Russian Tales
, a book I would urge you to track down if you have enjoyed my book in any way at all. It’s wonderful, and if you have never been able to walk through a Russian forest in the winter, it will take you there.

MS, October 2015

A TIMELINE

Dates are given according to the Julian Calendar, until February 1, 1918, when Russia adopted the modern Gregorian system. The Julian Calendar ran 13 days behind the Gregorian.

1905

J
ANUARY 9.
Bloody Sunday. The Tsar’s soldiers fire on the crowd demonstrating in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The Tsar establishes control once more, but in a concessionary move later in the year he is forced to inaugurate Russia’s first parliament.

1913

J
UNE 1.
Arthur Ransome arrives in St. Petersburg for the first time.

1914

J
ULY 19.
Germany declares war on Russia.

1916

D
ECEMBER 16.
Rasputin is murdered by a group of conspirators led by Prince Felix Yusupov. The extraordinary circumstances of his death become notorious. His death ends his influence over the Tsarina, but is irrelevant to Russia’s participation in a disastrous war.

1917

F
EBRUARY 25.
A general strike in Petrograd and violent clashes between soldiers and workers signal the start of the February Revolution.

M
ARCH 7.
The temporary government issues a decree for the arrest of Tsar Nicholas II.

A
PRIL 3.
Lenin returns from exile to Petrograd. He arrives at the Finland station to a rapturous welcome and makes a famous speech standing on the bonnet of an armored car.

O
CTOBER 25–26.
Bolshevik guards enter the Winter Palace and assume control of the city and the government.

D
ECEMBER 16.
Arthur interviews Trotsky and in so doing also meets Evgenia for the first time.

1918

J
ANUARY 18.
Robert Bruce Lockhart arrives in Petrograd.

F
EBRUARY 26.
The Bolsheviks begin to move their government to Moscow, fearing a German invasion of Petrograd.

N
IGHT OF
J
ULY 16.
Execution of the Tsar, his family, and retinue at Ekaterinburg.

A
UGUST 5.
Arthur arrives in Stockholm, having decided that Russia is getting too dangerous, where he is joined on August 28 by Evgenia.

A
UGUST 30.
Lenin narrowly survives an attempt on his life in Moscow. The Red Terror begins and Lockhart is arrested for his part in the alleged “Lockhart Plot.”

O
CTOBER 1.
With Arthur’s help, Lockhart is released, and the following day is expelled from Russia for good, leaving behind his mistress, Moura Budberg.

1919

J
ANUARY 30.
Having been expelled by the Swedish government from Stockholm under pressure from America and White sympathizers, Arthur and Evgenia return to Russia. At some point during his stay in Stockholm, Arthur has been officially designated “S76” by the SIS. Arthur refers to it as a “silly proposal” made by Wyatt, a British agent in Stockholm.

F
EBRUARY 4.
Arthur and Evgenia meet Trotsky and Lenin in Moscow. Trotsky is suspicious of Arthur, treating him as a spy, but Lenin welcomes him warmly.

M
ARCH 14.
Arthur leaves Evgenia behind in Russia, heading for England, where he is arrested on March 25 at King’s Cross Railway Station in London. He is taken to Scotland Yard and questioned by Sir Basil Thomson, head of Special Branch, but later released.

M
AY–
S
EPTEMBER.
The White Armies have the upper hand against the Reds and push toward Moscow.

A
UGUST.
Arthur secures a job as correspondent of the
Manchester Guardian,
enabling him to return to Russia, and Evgenia.

E
ARLY
O
CTOBER
. Arthur arrives in Reval, Estonia, and with the help of Assistant Foreign Minister Ants Piip, begins his journey across no man’s land into Russia on October 15.

O
CTOBER 22.
Arthur arrives under escort in Moscow and is reunited with Evgenia.

O
CTOBER 28.
Arthur and Evegnia leave Moscow and begin an amazing journey back across no man’s land by train, horse and cart, and on foot.

N
OVEMBER 5.
Arthur and Evgenia arrive safely in Reval, where they check in at the Golden Lion Hotel.

Eighty years after the story ends, a document surfaced in Washington’s Library of Congress that claimed that Evgenia had carried a small horde of valuables with her on their epic journey—32 diamonds and 3 ropes of pearls—their intended use apparently being to further the activities of Bolsheviks outside Russia.

RANSOME THE SPY?

SECRET SERVICE FILES RELEASED
by the National Archives on March 1, 2005, finally proved that to some extent at least, Arthur Ransome had engaged in secret activities for the SIS.

The files themselves are a confusing tangle of the memos flying around the various, still nascent, departments of the Secret Service, and the F.O. They do prove that AR had a codename (S76) and that he did do some work for the SIS, but also that he was suspected of being a Bolshevik agent by many. I think the truth lies in the middle: he worked for the British, and possibly also helped the Bolsheviks. For example, we know that Arthur was sent by Trotsky on a shopping expedition around Petrograd, but this was no idle shopping trip. Trotsky, albeit a legendary revolutionary, was at the start of the Revolution largely ignorant of the technicalities of warfare. He asked Arthur, who was making a trip from Moscow to check on his old flat in Petrograd, to visit some bookshops and purchase a long list of books on the theory of war. This Arthur did, and unwittingly or not was therefore responsible for helping Trotsky to create the Red Army.

It’s important to consider the nature of what we are talking about: Spying across Europe at the time was in its infancy. In Britain, the various departments had just been established: the Secret Service Bureau had been split into home and foreign departments in 1910. MI5 was, as now, the home section, under the control of Captain Vernon Kell. MI6 however was known as MI1c during the war, but by the end of the war was known as the SIS. Its first head was Captain Mansfield Cumming, or “C” (the head of MI6 is still called “C” from this time). There was rivalry between these departments and also with Special Branch, who all saw Bolshevik spies as their responsibility. Special Branch was run by Sir Basil Thomson who makes a brief appearance in Part 3 of the novel when he interrogates AR on his return from Russia in March 1919.

Spies at the time were few and far between and many of them were not professional “agents” but men in certain places who were asked to provide whatever information they could. This might be an English journalist or businessman, whose work took them to foreign parts, where they could observe and comment on, for example, the German fleet size. It really was like a gentleman’s club, full of eccentric behavior and few rules of engagement—one German spy refused to pass on information except via “pretty girls,” and the technology of information transfer was often primitive—knitting patterns in a newspaper were used as a code in one instance.

In Lockhart’s case, embassy staff were the perfect weapon of choice as they were largely immune from investigation by the “enemy,” being diplomats. Ransome fitted the bill of someone who just happened to have close contact with the Bolsheviks, more than any other Englishman, and so what the SIS might term spying was in reality just a question of passing on information that no one else had. I suspect it went little further than this—a question of charming people, saying the right things, asking the right questions, and passing this information back to the UK. What is more interesting is whether Ransome or Evgenia really left Russia with 3 million roubles of Bolshevik money.

APPENDIX

Memo 294084/M.I.5.E.

8th July 1918

My dear [blank passage]

With reference to F.O. telegram No. 301 of 21/6/18 from Moscow concerning the useful lady whom they wish to send to Stockholm and who will go as Ransome’s official wife. We have informed F.O. that there is no military objection.

However for your information I am informed very reliably that Ransome has applauded the Bolsheviks to such an extent in his newspaper writing that one is almost forced to the conclusion that he is a Bolshevik himself.

It would probably be worthwhile to keep an eye on the lady and see what her activities really are.

Yours sincerely,

S.

M.I.5.E

CX.050167

P/F. 84. Stockholm, 12-9-18

I do not know how much is known in London of Arthur Ransome’s activities here, or whether his dispatches are being allowed to go through and be published in the
Daily News
, but it certainly ought to be understood how completely he is in the hands of the Bolsheviks.