Less than 72 hours after the missing police chief’s daughter Barbara Lopukhin knocked at the door of Woburn Place and reassured everyone of her safety, Hastings compositor Alexis Sheftel boarded the RMS Lusitania in Liverpool and made the three thousand mile journey in steerage to start a new life in New York. The date was…
Category: Russia
United Russia Societies Association
Just weeks before Russia February Revolution swept Tsar Nicholas II from power, a crack team of Russian intelligence specialists, diplomats and Anglo-Russian Oligarchs pooled resources to form the United Russia Societies Association. As Britain pinned its hopes on the incoming Kerensky Government, Liberals and Conservatives In Britain looked forward to a whole new era in…
Lenin at 21 Tavistock Square, London, St Pancras 1908
21 Tavistock Place, St Pancras — 1908 In May 1908, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin arrives back in London carrying a written recommendation from Joseph J. Terrett in support of a request for entry into the British Museum Library. Sadly, on being unable to find a Joseph J. Terrett at the address provided on the reference, the…
Lenin at 30 Holford Square, London 1902
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya resided at 30 Holford Square from April 1902 until May 1903. As Bob Henderson’s seminal article, Lenin and the British Museum (Solanus, Vol 4) points out, it was from this address that Lenin, using his now customary pseudonym, Jacob Richter, first wrote to the Director of the…
Nachman Syrkin arrives in New York
After a closer look at travel records it appears that Alexei Sheftel was joined in New York by one of Chaim Weizmann’s closest allies, the Socialist Zionist, Nachman Syrkin, who immediately prior to moving to America had spent much of his time in London and Berlin. Press reports in July and August 1907 see him…
7 Oakley Square – J.W. Kolckmann & Family
Before we moving on, I think it should be remembered that the homes and contacts used by Vladimir Lenin and other political exiles during the early 1900s were critical to their safety. Trusted sources and associations were key to their survival and so when it came to lodgings when travelling abroad, the exiles were careful…