Tsar’s abdication

A young Englishwoman is caught up in the Russian Revolution

This vivid account of a young English-woman caught up in the Russian Revolution was first published in 1919 as Under Cossack and Bolshevik, but it’s possibly even more gripping today. Rhoda Power, a political science graduate, was 26 when she was hired as a tutor to a 16-year-old Russian girl, Natasha Sabaroff, living in Rostov-on-Don. Going to Russia had for years been one of her dreams, so off she sailed from Newcastle to Bergen through U-boat-infested seas; and, indeed, future sailings were cancelled after four ships were torpedoed. But she arrived safely in Bergen, where the Cook’s man put her on a train to Petrograd (St Petersburg), which she spent