DeWitt Clinton Poole Jr. (1885–1952) had a long
government career that included work for the State Department and
intelligence agencies. He also directed the School of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton University, where he founded the
journal Public Opinion Quarterly, and was a founder of the National
Committee for a Free Europe.
Lorraine M. Lees is a professor of history at Old
Dominion University and the author of Keeping Tito Afloat: The
United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War and Yugoslav-Americans
and National Security during World War II.
William S. Rodner is a professor of history at
Tidewater Community College and the author of Edwardian London
through Japanese Eyes: The Art and Writing of Yoshio Markino,
1897–1915.
"One of the strong points of this engrossing book is that Poole is
providing his view of the Russian Revolution at the time the events
unfolded as well as from the perspective of the early 1950s, when
he was interviewed about his experiences in Soviet Russia. The
juxtaposition of these two perspectives is especially
illuminating."--Bertrand Patenaude, Stanford University
"Sent to Moscow in 1917, junior diplomat DeWitt Clinton Poole
witnessed and reported on crucial developments before and after the
Bolshevik seizure of power. In addition to being a keen observer,
Poole played important and little known roles in U.S. unofficial
relations with the early Soviet government and contacts with
anti-Bolshevik forces in the developing civil war in Russia. His
oral history memoir helps to fill in the gaps in the published
records of events."--David Foglesong, Rutgers University
"[This] new book chronicling the impressions of a US traveler who
witnessed the Russian Revolution firsthand offers a fascinating
insight into that momentous historical event. . . . Alongside
geopolitical records are details of everyday life: Poole's journey
through a disintegrating Russia, with British novelist Somerset
Maugham as a chance companion in a train with a piano in the dining
car, is vividly recalled."-- Russia beyond the Headlines
"A fascinating edition of US diplomat DeWitt Clinton Poole's oral
account of his experience in revolutionary Russia from 1917 to
1919. . . . His views of the early Bolshevik government, like those
of other Americans who were there, are critical as the centennial
of the Russian Revolution approaches. Highly recommended, all
levels/libraries."--Choice
"A historical treasure trove for an era that will never be short on
paradoxes, colorful characters, brutal conflict, and harrowing
circumstances. Poole, one of the last American diplomats in Russia
after the Bolshevik revolution and before recognition in 1933, was
a cool, detached observer of events, and rather prescient in his
predictions."--Russian Life
"Poole's memoirs remind us that, before November 1918 when the
First World War ended and Kolchak staged his counter-revolutionary
coup in Siberia, the Allies' main concern was to keep Russia in the
war. . . . The memoirs also shed important light on the political
atmosphere in Moscow in July and August 1918 when not only Poole
but the Left SRs as well were convinced that Soviet Russia had
become little more than a colony of Imperial Germany. With such
important insights into the origins of Allied intervention in
Russia, these memoirs are an important addition to the documentary
record of the Russian Civil War."--Europe-Asia Studies
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