Rappaport’s work revolves around a series of portraits of the personal lives of several dozen Russians who found themselves in Paris during the first four decades of the twentieth century, with key personalities appearing and reappearing across a loosely chronological narrative.īetween October 1917 and mid-1921, Paris became the destination of choice for thousands of refugees from Russia. Describing “just how they lived” in Paris is precisely the task British freelance-writer Helen Rappaport sets for herself in After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War.

Many arrived without jewels, ornaments, heirlooms, or much else. Most of the Russians whom Hemingway had encountered were refugees fleeing the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the civil wars that ensued after the Bolshevik takeover in Russia. He went on to inform his readers that the Russians were “drifting along in Paris in a childish sort of hopelessness that things will somehow be all right … No one knows just how they live except by selling off jewels and gold ornaments and family heirlooms that they brought with them to France.” The correspondent was an eager young journalist and writer from the American Midwest, Ernest Hemingway, who had only arrived in Paris the previous December.

Paris is “full of Russians at present.” That was how a recently-minted European correspondent for the Toronto Star began his report that appeared on February 25, 1922-by an odd coincidence almost one hundred years prior to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack upon neighboring Ukraine on February 24 of this year. Share the post 'After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris'Ī book review of Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris From the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War ( St.

After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport