Interview: Helen Rappaport

Helen Rappaport is an acclaimed historian specialising in Russia and also the role of women in history. I thought her account of the last days of the Romanovs, Ekaterinburg, was a remarkable book when I reviewed it a while ago. I recently finished reading her latest hardback, Conspirator, an account of Lenin's seventeen years in exile and reviewed it earlier in the week.

Here is an interview with Helen conducted via email while she was in the Black Sea recently.

SP: So, why did you decide to focus on a slice of Lenin's life rather than the whole thing? And why this period?

HR: The problem with all major historical and political subjects like Lenin is that so much has already been written and I was determined to find something new to say, and particularly from a woman's perspective. When I looked at his overall biography I soon came to the conclusion that the emphasis had been mainly on the years in power and not much said about his early years in exile and what made him the man he was.

My basic approach to writing history is finding a new way into an old story and once I started digging there was a lot about those lost 17 years in exile that had not really been explored. It's also a fascinating period generally in terms of the Russian revolutionaries in exile - that whole world Conrad explored so brilliantly in The Secret Agent.

SP: What is it about Russia and Russian history that appeals to you so much?

HR: My love of Russia and all things Russian springs from a rather corny but true first love experience when I read Chekhov's exquisite short story The Lady with the Little Dog and then graduated to Doctor Zhivago - a wonderfully poetic and moving work of literature but not an easy read aged 15! Thereafter I read and consumed everything and anything I could find by Russians and about Russia.

I think at heart it is a very romantic passion for a country and a language that I find totally beguiling and intriguing. And the langugage, for me, is so melodic and beautiful and I consider myself hugely lucky to be able to speak it. What appeals to me in particular as a historian is the incredible Russian capactiy for enduring, for suffering - that powerful sense of resignation you find in the Russian Orthodox, which came through to me very strongly writing Ekaterinburg.

SP: Do you think there is a gender split or territory when it comes to historical authors? Put very crudely, do men write about wars, generals and kings and woman about queens, art and places? If you look at the bestsellers on Amazon you have Antony Beevor on D-Day, Andrew Roberts on WW2, Max Hastings on Churchill and Alison Weir on Anne Boleyn, Amanda Vickery on Georgian households. I know there are expections but am I talking bollocks?

HR: Well this is a very interesting point Scott which I have been pondering ever since David Starkey raised the issue that in his opinion there is far too much 'feminisation' of history going on with some women historians attempting perhaps to overpromote the role of some women in histroy (Starkey's particular bugbear being the six wives of Henry VIII). I personally feel there has been an increasing 'ghettoisation' in history and biography writing over the last ten years or so since Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire with a lot of women historians etc. rushing to find 'another Georgiana' but I personally am getting very bored with all the books in the 'wives, lovers and mistresses of' genre.

You are quite right - certainly in terms of war, military history and big male political figures there seems to be an overemphasis of men writing on men and male topics and women sticking to the women. That is one of the major reasons why I felt so passionate about taking on Lenin. When you look at the Soviets in particular - all the major figures: Stalin, Trotsky, and, till now, Lenin have all been tackled almost exclusively in trade publsihing by male historians - e.g. Prof Service's huge new tome on Trotsky just out.

I felt one way forward for women historians such as myself in the absence of enough good female subjects was to offer a female perspective on these male figures that might perhaps have something new to say. Also in Conspirator I set out to give a higher profile to Lenin's extraordinary and dedicated wife Nadya who is so often marginalised in books about him. I can't make claims for Nadya as a power player in his story but I do feel I have given her her due, which many Lenin biographies do not do.

SP: What were your favourite discoveries when researching Lenin's time in exile?

HR: I guess fundamentally that he would not have made to to 1917 without the back up of a lot of people. Finding out what a coward he was and how much he depended on the protection of others - at two partciular points in the story his skin was saved by foreign nationals - the Finns and the Poles - but they never get any credit in the Soviet produced hagiographies.

Going to Finland and Poland and researching the stories on the ground gave me a whole new perspective on his real life in exile and the people who helped him survive. Walking the streets of London in his tracks was fun too and I did winkle out some fascinating eye witness testimony on that time. In fact there was quite a wealth of 'I was Lenin's landlady' stories out their waiting to be found. Some of the indpendent, non Soviet eye witnesses I found in Europe were extremely revealing.

SP: One of the most striking things in the book was what a miserable bastard Lenin was all the time. What was it like 'living' with him while writing the book?

HR: I wouldnt quite describe him as a miserable bastard - he did have a sense of humour that flashed through now and then but he so rarely let go that the flashes of a more relaxed man are hard to find. But god yes what Nadya had to put up with: a monomaniac, control freak with the mentality of a head master who I think today would be analysed as compulsive obsessive. I found him utterly infuriating most of the time, and I particularly was repelled by his amorality and ruthlessness and the way in which he had no scruples about using people to his own ends.

Overall I found him compelling to work on - but in the end I came away with any remaining thought I might have had that he was the 'good guy' to Stalin's 'bad guy' completely flattened. They were two of a kind - totally driven and merciless when it came to achieving their political ends. And now from what Bob Service says in his book on Trotsky it would seem that he was just as bad! The cruel streak in all these men is unuttterably chilling.

SP: Another was that he had a bit of an eye for the ladies. What would have attracted them to him?

HR: Power power power. I think a lot of women are drawn to clever compelling men as Inessa was - although maybe simultaneously at times also repelled by their ruthlessness. An eye for the ladies - not sure if that is the right way to describe it. Lenin was from evidence I found in Paris voracious sexually but spent a lot of time repressing his sexuality for the sake of his more important political pursuits. But I think he went over the edge in Paris and that is where the key to this all lies. But the trouble is of course that no Soviet or Russian source ever says a single honest word about that side of his life.

SP: I must ask you a question about Ekaterinburg, which I loved. I found myself feeling a bit sorry for the princesses but not remotely for their parents. As a historian, do you have to remove yourself from such emotion or do you realy get involved with the characters you are writing about?

HR: I have to say that try as hard as I could to like Alexandra she was a tough call. Nicholas I could see as a fatally weak and henpecked man but one who did at least have a hugely positive side - his charm, his kindness and his total and utter adoration of his children. He was an exemplary family man but a lousy monarch and that is his tragedy.

But yes the children - I could not but get hugely emotionally involved with them. Much like you I felt for them and not for their parents in the end - who largely brought the catastrophe of their demise on themselves. But none of them deserved to die like that. It was hideous and that was the hardest part of the book to write. I talked at length to a forensics expert before I started and wrote that chapter from several differenct perspective, adding the layers - i.e. first a totally dispassionate blow by blow account of what happened; then seeing it from the point of view of the family, then the guards, then adding the narrative line last.

Lots of people have told me that reading that chapter made them cry. I felt drained at the end of it. And yes, it was very hard for me to let go of the Romanovs - I felt very deeply involved with them by the end and would like to return to the story some time.

SP: What is coming next?

HR: A change of direction for a couple of books - back to my other great love, the Victorians. Out next March with Susan Hill's independent imprint Long Barn Books is Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street - Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer. It's a Victorian true crime history all written from - I have to say - stunning primary sources. I guess you'd say it is in the Mr Whicher category. It's a compelling story - which is why I love writing history. Real people and real lives never cease to fascinate me.

Then in 2011 I will be bringing out a book currently titled Memorial about the death of Prince Albert - a sort of countdown along the lines of Ekaterinburg taking a close up look at the circumstances of his death and its impact on the monarchy and British social history - the fetishism of Victoria's cult of mourning etc.

SP: And can you recommend my readers a jolly good book?

HR: Well although I don't usually read much fiction I have been totally absorbed in Victorian pastiche while doing Beautiful For Ever and I absolutely loved Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night.

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I thought Helen beautifully handled some of my more flippant questions and I hope her fascinating answers have made you want to read some of her work. She was one of our guests at the second Firestation Book Swap and had the audience enthralled at her tales from Russia.

Comments

[sarah]

I'll try not to sound as stupidly pompous as the other day - but just to say that Helen writes a great page-turning, 'human' history without ever dumbing down. I can't wait to read Beautiful Forever - so please remind when that comes out. And, as for Cox's The Meaning of Night...yes, it's one of the best 'Victorian' novels I've read in years...though The Quincunx has to be up there.

[Jepne]

Thank you for this. I really enjoyed reading it. I just heard Helen Rappaport interviewed on the radio and wanted to know more about her. You asked some good questions.