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From International Socialism (1st series), No.59, June 1973, p.22.
Transcribed & marked up by by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Russian and Soviet Imperialism
E.J. Foote
(Foreign Affairs Publishing Co, £3.00)
Those comrades looking for a book on Russian and Soviet imperialism, packed with statistics and penetrating analysis, should go on looking, because this isn’t it. However anyone looking for a tale of the orgies, sexual habits, physical defects, murders and pogroms of the Russian ruling classes over the last 1200 years or so has a treat in store, It’s all highly dubious, of course, as you would expect of a book whose sources include those eminent historians Patrick Wall, Alec Douglas-Home, Winston Churchill and J. Edgar Hoover. One thing Foote has on his side is the love of dogs, and anyone who likes the little furry creatures can’t be all bad. And to prove it he has a little tale about one of the white armies during the civil war. It appears that when Anastasia, the Tsar’s daughter was being led to her execution she bore in her arms her pet spaniel Jimmy who was brutally done to death with rifle butts. However in a: footnote we are told, ‘the second spaniel was either forgotten or not found; later it was rescued by the White army.’ After all the trouble the army took rescuing the dog from a fate worse than Anastasia I’m surprised that they didn’t declare it Tsar. But perhaps Foote just didn’t think of putting it in.
As one final bonus, at the end of the book you get a two foot long chart of the Romanov family tree, from Ruric (Simeous and Trevor) 862-879 to Marina and Duke of Kent (killed on active service 1942) R.I.P.
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Last updated on 25.12.2007