In the third of our Zoom lectures in partnership with the Anglo-Russian Research Network, Ben Phillips speaks on refugees from 1881-1917.
Herzen, Kropotkin, and Lenin all lived, at some point in their lives, in London.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, London – having long provided a refuge for overseas democrats, radicals and revolutionaries – became one of Europe’s leading destinations for anti-Tsarist Russian émigrés: from one time to another, figures as varied and distinguished as Alexander Herzen, Petr Kropotkin, Vera Zasulich and Lenin himself made their homes on the banks of the Thames.
This talk explores the colourful history of the Russian emigration to London during the years 1881-1917, when the political struggle against Tsarism accelerated dramatically and became the object of global attention. It focuses attention not just on Russian émigrés’ revolutionary enterprises and factional disputes, but their relations with the British public, their place within wider transnational left-wing networks and their contribution to the eventual collapse of the Russian monarchy in 1917 .
Ben Phillips is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter. His forthcoming book, Inventing Revolutionary Russia: Siberian Exile and the Transnational Mythologies of Russian Radicalism 1825-1917, will be published by Routledge in 2021.
The Anglo-Russian Research Network was established in 2011 by Rebecca Beasley and Matthew Taunton to bring together research students, scholars and members of the general public interested in the influence of Russian and Soviet culture and politics in Britain in the period 1880–1950. The ARRN invites proposals for reading groups on any aspect of Anglo-Russian history of cultural relations and literary/translation/reception/art history studies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (c. 1880–1950). To get involved, please, contact Dr Ben Phillips, Nicholas Hall or Anna Maslenova.
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