Helen Rappaport. After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Epoque through Revolution and War.

       Remarkably even-keeled and cool-headed book, given the current political climate, albeit somewhat pedestrian. There are some small deficiencies in her narrative. For the author who is Helen Rappaport, and not Sean MacMeakin or Timothy Snyder, quoting Nina Berberova's elation for the Russian emigres who on the start of the Second World War went to Berlin to join Hitler's war effort without at least some critical comment is pretty strange. The husband and wife duo of Merezhkovsky and Hippius, prominently figuring in the pages, was widely considered evil pricks by most memoirists. Wartime diaries of fanatical Bolshevik-hater, Nobelist Ivan Bunin, demonstrate his disdain for German occupation and shameful behavior of the Russian collaborators. Remarkable, given Bunin's past anti-Semitic leanings and petty nobleman's pride, was his sympathy for the persecuted Jews. 

        The lives of exiles was not all misery and nostalgia: Rakhmaninov, Stravinsky, Sikorsky, Kistiakowsky and numerous others lived very well, thank you. Larionov, Goncharova, Zdanevich and Pozner became purveyors of the French culture. The story of Russian Corps fighting for France is reduced to one small paragraph telling about their discontent and mutiny. While this is technically correct after Soviet Russia signed an armistice with Germany in 1918, they fought on the fronts throughout the war in large numbers. But indeed, after the armistice, many demanded return to Russia and the French, fearing Bolshevist propaganda tried to put them away to the colonies. 

    Dear Helen missed two seminal sources in the study of Russian emigration. One is magisterial studies by Vladimir Ronin: Antwerpen en zijn ‘Russen’, 1814-1914 (1993); Russen en Belgen: is het water te diep? (1998) and two-volume ‘Russkoe Kongo’, 1870-1970 (2009). Though, technically they speak about Russian emigration to Belgium, the picture of the life in the Belgian Congo would be broadly applicable to the Russians in the French colonies as well. Another is encyclopedia of the Russian literature in emigration (Литература Русского Зарубежья). Helen Rappaport must know the writings of its editor, Alexander Nikolyukin, given that he was a main editor of Merezhkovsky and Hippius diaries. May be, his pre-1976 past as a pimp for underage girls prevented her from prominently quoting his work. But kudos for Helen, anyway. 

Mary Hollingworth. Princes of the Renaissance

There is an anecdote among art historians. Great Tamerlane had a bad right leg and a left arm. He invited three painters to make his portrait. The first painted him all intact. Tamerlane executed the painter. This was the birth of romanticism. The second painter depicted him as he was and was duly executed as well. This was the birth of realism. Finally, the third artist painted him in profile from the left side, so that his right leg was covered by the horse and the left arm -- by the shield. He was amply rewarded and this was the birth of socialist realism.

The brilliant book by Mary Hollingworth is an exercise in socialist realism in the above sense. The magnificence of the princes of the Renaissance, principally, d'Este, Sforza and Farnese families, as well as their patronage of the architectural and visual is shown all over the place. Their unbridled sadism, avarice and lechery is mentioned only in passing, frequently in elliptic terms. Even if the sufferings of the lower classes - the ones who built palaces, mixed paints, mercury ointments for their syphilis and gunpowder, fought their wars and died in epidemics under their rule - was not the goal of the book. Their wanton cruelty and serial rapes of both sexes by the rulers and prelates is glossed over. Inquisition and its excesses are barely present in the pages. The case of Princes of the Church who sired numerous illegitimate offspring from numerous mistresses for whose benefit they poisoned rivals, initiated wars, or engaged in profligate construction projects is mentioned only as a matter of fact. 

But from the left side all looks splendid. The book is well organized and carefully, and insightfully, illustrated. My only regret is that that uppity British woman does not notice society beyond the highest nobility, not even such rank commoners as G. B. Alberti, Rafael, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Evidently, she considers them paid servants not worthy of research.