mythical city, and like all mythical cities this shimmering, culturally prodigious metropolis had an obligation to melt away. It began to do so in 1914, when its name changed toPetrograd; âSt. Petersburgâ disappeared from maps for the next seventy-seven years. The first rumblings of revolution had made themselves felt in those same newspapers Véra had been reading as a three-year-old. January 1905 brought the greatest strike Russia had yet witnessed; life in Petersburg essentially came to a standstill. The situation deteriorated as the year wore on; the government manifesto issued in response to the unrest provoked violence and pogroms throughout the Empire. A sense of dislocation and apprehension accompanied the next years, years in which the Slonim girls learned to hold fiercely to their own opinions, something in which few Russians stand in need ofsupplementary coaching. There was already about Véra Slonim the kind of âintellectual arroganceâ of which Diana Trilling wrote in her autobiography, linking it back to her fatherâs deep confidence in her. Discontent hung heavily in the air, and certain precautions were taken: If Véra Slonim learned about the French Revolution, she did so at home, not at school, where it vanished from the curriculum after 1914.
In 1916, as she was sitting for her Obolensky A levels, the inflation that had set in the previous year rose to crisis levels. The war with Germany had ruined the Russian economy. Already thebreadlines stretched the lengths of streets. By the fall prices had quadrupled, and Petrogradâthe city at the greatest remove from the food-growing areasâbraced itself for a miserable winter. The blizzards came but the supplies did not; only about a quarter of the trains that normally serviced the city arrived. Lines formed everywhere, for everything. Laid-off workers scuffled in the streets. The hunger quickly transformed itself into discontent with the monarchy; the frustrating course of the war did not help, nor did an especially savage winter. The rest of the country continued calmly on its way, but in the cities, and in Petrograd in particular, the feel of violence was palpable. The trouble exploded a little over a mile from Furstadtskaya Street, when the weather broke in February. Within days what had begun as a large-scale hunger riot billowed into a full-blown revolution. On February 27 the troops that had been sent in to quell the violence mutinied; the bark of machine guns could be heard through the night. By early March Tsar Nicholas II had been convinced to abdicate. He was replaced by a liberal Provisional Government, in which Nabokovâs father was named Minister of Justice, and of which he wrote probably the most succinct epithet: âI primarily remember an atmosphere in which everything seemed unreal.â Too hastily, this transfer of power was heralded as the Great Bloodless Revolution. The stage was set for the arrival of Lenin, whom the Germans covertly returned to Russia with the hope that he would topple the new democracy, thereby extracting it from the war. Lenin emerged from his train at the Finland Station on April 16 to the tune of âLa Marseillaise,âan anthem that must have rung uneasily in Véra Evseevnaâs ears; it had been sung by demonstrators all spring. The Slonims were for the most part on Furstadtskaya Street, where they appear to have stayed through the coup dâétat of October, when Leninâs troops stormed the Winter Palace, overturning the aptly named Provisional Government, and into 1918, when Petrograd looked less like the legendary Venice of the North than like an armed encampment. Anything that could vaguely be construed as edible was consumed. No one bothered to clear the snow that winter, when groups of Red Guards huddled around bonfires in the streets, interrogating anyone who passed. By the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks had instituted a one-party system. What had
In 1916, as she was sitting for her Obolensky A levels, the inflation that had set in the previous year rose to crisis levels. The war with Germany had ruined the Russian economy. Already thebreadlines stretched the lengths of streets. By the fall prices had quadrupled, and Petrogradâthe city at the greatest remove from the food-growing areasâbraced itself for a miserable winter. The blizzards came but the supplies did not; only about a quarter of the trains that normally serviced the city arrived. Lines formed everywhere, for everything. Laid-off workers scuffled in the streets. The hunger quickly transformed itself into discontent with the monarchy; the frustrating course of the war did not help, nor did an especially savage winter. The rest of the country continued calmly on its way, but in the cities, and in Petrograd in particular, the feel of violence was palpable. The trouble exploded a little over a mile from Furstadtskaya Street, when the weather broke in February. Within days what had begun as a large-scale hunger riot billowed into a full-blown revolution. On February 27 the troops that had been sent in to quell the violence mutinied; the bark of machine guns could be heard through the night. By early March Tsar Nicholas II had been convinced to abdicate. He was replaced by a liberal Provisional Government, in which Nabokovâs father was named Minister of Justice, and of which he wrote probably the most succinct epithet: âI primarily remember an atmosphere in which everything seemed unreal.â Too hastily, this transfer of power was heralded as the Great Bloodless Revolution. The stage was set for the arrival of Lenin, whom the Germans covertly returned to Russia with the hope that he would topple the new democracy, thereby extracting it from the war. Lenin emerged from his train at the Finland Station on April 16 to the tune of âLa Marseillaise,âan anthem that must have rung uneasily in Véra Evseevnaâs ears; it had been sung by demonstrators all spring. The Slonims were for the most part on Furstadtskaya Street, where they appear to have stayed through the coup dâétat of October, when Leninâs troops stormed the Winter Palace, overturning the aptly named Provisional Government, and into 1918, when Petrograd looked less like the legendary Venice of the North than like an armed encampment. Anything that could vaguely be construed as edible was consumed. No one bothered to clear the snow that winter, when groups of Red Guards huddled around bonfires in the streets, interrogating anyone who passed. By the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks had instituted a one-party system. What had
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