Through the prism of the experiences of five British governesses working in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, Harvey Pitcher paints a rich and intimate portrait of pre Revolutionary Russian society and finds himself with a unique eyewitness perspective on the Russian Revolution and the civil war which swept that society into oblivion. These intrepid women, who achieved an intellectual dignity denied them at home by working abroad, describe a complex, liberal and humane society which has been all but forgotten in the overblown stereotypes beloved by both Soviet and Tsarist apologists. But it is the extraordinary personal adventures of these women as they negotiate the turmoil and anarchy of revolution and civil war which gives the book its page-turning tension.
