Time of troubles, the diary of Iurii Vladimirovich Gotʹe

by Gotʹe, I͡U. V

Among the few diaries available from inside early Soviet Russia none approaches Iurii V. Got'e's in sustained length of coverage and depth of vivid detail. Got'e was a member of the Moscow intellectual elite - a complex and unusually observant man, who was a professor at Moscow University and one of the most prominent historians of Russia at the time the revolution broke out. Beginning his first entry with the words Finis Russiae, he describes his life in revolution-torn Moscow from July 8, 1917 through July 23, 1922 - nearly the entire period of the Russia Revolution and Civil War up to the advent of the New Economic policy. This remarkable chronicle, published here for the first time, describes the hardships undergone by Got'e's family and friends and the gradual takeover of the academic and professional sectors of Russia by the new regime. Not least it traces the changes in Got'e's own attitudes as he struggled to preserve academic standards throughout these difficult years. He was