Olga Chernov Andreyev
Cold Spring in Russia.
Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1978. Foreword by Arthur Miller. Translated Michael Carlisle. 0882333038 283 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9.25", is bound in textured green leatherette, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are like new. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"The writer's adoptive father, Victor Chernov, was a leader and theoretician of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia at the turn of the century. Exiled, with his family, under the Tsar, Chernov returned to Russia in 1917, after the Revolution, and in 1918, was elected chairman of the Constituent Assembly, the only democratically-conceived parliamentary body ever convened in Russia. The Assembly held one democratic session under the guns and bayonets of Red sailors before it was disbanded forever. Thus Chernov's opening speech was the last free political utterance to be heard in Russia to this day.
The impact of "Cold Spring in Russia" is manifold. It tells the story of people involved in an important political movement that is now all but forgotten. We meet a variety of historical personages, form Vera Figner to Maxim Gorky, and learn hitherto unknown things about them. And we see firsthand the struggle that followed immediately upon the Bolshevik takeover of Russia."