Born in Moscow on 9 October 1888 to two primary school teachers, the 17-year-old Bukharin joined the workers’ cause during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and, the following year, became a member of the Bolshevik Party. Like many of his radical colleagues, he was arrested at regular intervals to the point that, in 1910, he fled into exile.

At various times he lived in Vienna, Zurich, London, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Krakow, the latter where he met Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, and began working for the party newspaper, Pravda, ‘Truth’.  In 1916, he moved to New York where he met up with another leading revolutionary, Leon Trotsky.

‘Favourite of the whole party’

Following the February Revolution of 1917 and the overthrow of the tsar, Nicholas II, Bukharin returned to Moscow and was elected to the party’s central committee. Bukharin clashed with Lenin on the latter’s decision to surrender to Germany, thus ending Russia’s involvement in the First World War, believing that the Bolsheviks could transform the conflict into a pan-European communist revolution. Lenin got his way, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsky was duly signed in March 1918.

Bukharin was a thinker and produced several theoretical tracts, works that didn’t always meet with Lenin’s full approval. In Lenin’s Testament, in which he passed judgement on various members of his Central Committee, Lenin wrote that Bukharin was ‘rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party,’ but ‘his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with the great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him.’ (Lenin’s Testament was particularly damning of Joseph Stalin but, following Lenin’s death on 21 January 1924, was quietly suppressed).

‘Not a man, but a devil’

In 1924, Bukharin was appointed a full member of the Politburo. It was here, during the immediate post-Lenin years, that Bukharin became an unwitting pawn in Stalin’s deadly power games. Bukharin had opposed collectivization and believed agriculture was best served by encouraging the richer peasants, the kulaks, to produce more. In this he was supported by Stalin – but only in order for Stalin to marginalise then remove those he saw as threats, men such as Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. Kamenev and Zinoviev soon caved in to Stalin. Trotsky, who did not, was exiled, first within the Soviet Union, then to Turkey and ultimately to Mexico where, in August 1940, he was killed by a Stalinist agent. Having defeated his opponents, Stalin then took their ideas and advocated rapid collectivization and the liquidation of the kulaks, criticizing Bukharin for holding opposite views.

Bukharin realised what Stalin was doing: ‘He [Stalin] is an unprincipled intriguer who subordinates everything to his appetite for power. At any given moment he will change his theories in order to get rid of someone.’

During a visit to Paris in February 1936, where, on Stalin’s orders, he was retrieving the archives of Marx and Engels, Bukharin visited an exiled Menshevik and there, momentarily free from the all-seeing eyes of the Soviet state, talked of his boss: ‘If anyone can talk better than him, that person is doomed, Stalin won’t let him live. Stalin is a little evil man; no, not a man, but a devil.’

Downfall

Bukharin’s downfall was rapid – Stalin removed anyone who showed support for Bukharin and, in 1929, expelled Bukharin from the Politburo. Bukharin, realising the danger he was in, renounced his views. In 1934, speaking at a party congress, he said meekly: “The members of the Communist Party ought to stand together to make the ideals of Comrade Stalin come true.” Stalin seemingly forgave him and appointed Bukharin editor of Izvestia and asked him to oversee the text for the new Soviet Constitution. But it was all part of the cat-and-mouse games Stalin revelled in.

Meanwhile, Bukharin’s old comrades, Kamenev and Zinoviev, were put on show trial, accused of ludicrous crimes, and, in 1936, executed. Bukharin was not sorry, crowing that he was ‘glad’ they had been shot like ‘dogs’. It would not be long until it was his turn.

(Bukharin was a competent cartoonist and pictured is a cartoon he did of the man that would one day order his execution).

‘It is impossible to live’

In February 1937, the arrest duly came. He responded by going on hunger strike. Stalin criticized him: ‘How dare you give us an ultimatum. Who are you to challenge the Central Committee?’ Bukharin responded, ‘With such accusations hanging over me, it is impossible to live’, to which Stalin accused him of blackmail.

During his year of incarceration, awaiting trial within the feared walls of Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Bukharin wrote. And he wrote a lot – some 1,400 pages, including 200 poems and even a novel, How It All Began. Remarkable – given his circumstances, not just of imprisonment but knowing his life would soon end by an executioner’s bullet. The novel, a semi-autobiographical work, known in Russia as ‘the prison novel’, was left unfinished; indeed it ends mid-sentence.

Bukharin was accused, amongst many obviously false accusations, of planning to assassinate Stalin and of being a Trotskyite. (Soon, the word ‘Bukharinite’ came into common usage. To be labelled as such was almost as damning as being labelled a Trotskyite).

Bukharin only confessed when his interrogators used a favourite tack and threatened to bring in his wife and family. Later, however, he retracted his confession. Ultimately, his confession, or lack of it, was immaterial – the result was a foregone conclusion. ‘The monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable,’ he said on the final day of his trial; ‘Everybody perceives the wise leadership of the country that is ensured by Stalin.’ The state prosecutor assigned to preside over his trial, Andrey Vyshinsky, dismissed Bukharin as a ‘hybrid: half fox, half pig’.

Bukharin had married three times. All three wives ended up in a gulag. He married his third wife, Anna Larina, in January 1934, and as newly-weds they lived for a while in the Kremlin apartment where Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin’s second wife, had committed suicide in November 1932.

Anna Larina’s Great Ordeal

Soon after his arrest, Bukharin wrote a letter to Anna, in which he warned: ‘A great ordeal awaits you. I beg you, my dearest, muster all your strength, tighten all the strings of your heart, but don’t allow them to break.’ But Anna herself had been arrested. She received the letter fifty-four years later, in 1992. One can only imagine the impact – reading a desperate letter written over a half a century before.

Following Bukharin’s arrest, Anna Larina spent 18 months in a cell, ankle-deep in water, during which time she learned from another prisoner, via the tapping on her cell wall, that her husband had been executed. She served a further eighteen years in a gulag and was only released in 1959. She spent years trying to clear Bukharin’s name which, in 1988, fifty years after his execution, she finally managed to achieve. She wrote This I Cannot Forget, published 1993, about Bukharin and their life together. She died in 1996 – five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Letters of a condemned man

While in prison awaiting his fate, Nikolai Bukharin wrote thirty-four desperate letters to Stalin. Not one was answered. In one he promises that if released he would ‘wage a mortal war against Trotsky’, even offering up his wife as a hostage for six months as an ‘added insurance’. In another letter, he asks of Stalin, ‘Koba, why do you need me to die?’ (‘Koba’ being a revolutionary nickname used by Stalin in his younger days. The letter was found hidden in Stalin’s desk following his death 15 years later.)

In his last letter to Stalin, Bukharin writes pathetically, ‘[I] have learned to cherish and love you wisely.’ He begs Stalin to allow him to die by poison not by a bullet: ‘I implore you beforehand, I entreat you … let me have a cup of morphine.’ Not only did Stalin ignore this request, but Bukharin was forced to sit and watch as others were shot before him.

In the same letter, Bukharin maintains his innocence, writing, ‘My heart boils over when I think that you might believe that I am guilty of these crimes … Standing on the edge of a precipice, from which there is no return, I tell you on my word of honour, as I await my death, that I am innocent of those crimes to which I admitted.’ 

It did him little good – Nikolai Bukharin was executed 15 March 1938, aged 49, a victim of the system he helped create.

Rupert Colley.

Read more Soviet / Russian history in The Clever Teens’ Guide to the Russian Revolution (80 pages) available as paperback and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Born a slave on 2 October 1800, the young Nat delighted and astounded his fellow slaves by describing events from before he was born. He was given the surname, Turner, from his original owner. The boy, his parents exclaimed, was a prophet. The son of Nat’s master taught the young Nat to read, and he grew up a pious, God-fearing man, influenced by visions or messages from God. He devoured the bible, prayed and fasted and became convinced that God had chosen him to lead his fellow slaves out of servitude.

Listening to God

Aged 21, Turner ran away from his master but voluntarily returned after a month having received God’s instruction to ‘return to the service of my earthly master’.

In 1830, Turner was sold to a new master, Joseph Travis, whom Turner described as a kind master. But however ‘kind’ he may have been, Travis would not survive the coming bloodbath that Turner, with God’s help, was now planning.

An eclipse of the sun in February 1831 was interpreted by Turner as the hand of a black man covering the sun, a sure sign that the time had come. Having enlisted the help of four fellow salves, Turner prepared, only to fall ill. His people would have to wait and endure a while longer.

Six months later, however, he received a second Holy prompt – another solar eclipse. Again, Turner confided in his most trusted companions and again he made his plans. This time there was to be no turning back.

At 2 am on 22 August 1831, Turner and his small band of conspirators quietly broke into the Travis home and, armed with hatchets and axes, slayed the whole family as they lay asleep, including an infant. (He had decided against the use of guns because of the noise). From there, they moved from house to house silently killing whites, young and old. Along the way, they freed manacled blacks.

It took almost ten hours before the alarm was sounded, by which time 55 whites had been killed and Turner’s party numbered forty blacks. Federal troops rushed to the scene. The rebels scattered, a few were captured straight away. Turner escaped and over the next two months, moved from one hiding place to another. Finally, on 30 October, he was discovered hiding in a hole and arrested (pictured).

Confession

Whilst awaiting trial, Turner dictated his biography and confession to his assigned lawyer, Thomas R Gray, who later later had them published as The Confessions of Nat Turner.

The Southampton court had no hesitation in sentencing Nat Turner to death and on 11 November 1831, Turner was executed by being hung, skinned and beheaded. 19 others had already been hung.

Turner’s rebellion caused great shock among the white American South. Freed blacks had their privileges restricted, slaves were banned from learning to read lest education should produce another Turner, while white mobs murdered scores of defenceless blacks in a frenzy of revenge.

Twelve years later, the black abolitionist, Henry Highland Garnet, gave an impassioned speech, praising Turner, ‘The patriotic Nathaniel Turner was goaded to desperation by wrong and injustice. By despotism, his name has been recorded on the list of infamy, but future generations will number him upon the noble and brave’

Rupert Colley.

Gathered together in one collection, 60 of Rupert Colley’s history articles, The Savage Years: Tales From the 20th Century, is now available.

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Margaretha Zelle

Born 7 August 1876 to a wealthy Dutch family, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle responded to a newspaper advertisement from a Rudolf MacLeod, a Dutch army officer of Scottish descent, seeking a wife. The pair married within three months of meeting each other and in 1895 moved to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) where they had two children.

The marriage was doomed from the beginning – 22 years older, MacLeod was an abusive husband and Zelle was never going to play the part of the dutiful wife. Their son died aged 2 from syphilis, reputably inherited from his father (their daughter would die a similar death, aged 21) and in 1902, on their return to the Netherlands, they separated.

Unable to find work and uncertain about her future, Zelle moved to Paris and there changed her name to Mata Hari, claiming she originated from India and was the daughter of a temple dancer. She started to earn a living by modelling and dancing, and found work in a cabaret. Exotically dressed, she became a huge success and was feted by the powerful and rich of Paris, taking on a number of influential lovers. She travelled numerous times between France and the Netherlands. But by now war had broken out and Mata Hari’s movements and high-ranking liaisons caused suspicion.

Arrested

Arrested by the British, Hari was interrogated. She admitted to passing German information on to the French. In turn, the French discovered evidence, albeit of doubtful authenticity, that she was spying for the Germans under the codename ‘H21’. Hari had indeed been recruited by the Germans, given the name H21 and received 20,000 francs as a down payment. Never one to turn down money, she accepted it but did no spying in return nor ever felt obliged to.

Returning to Paris, Hari was then arrested by the French and accused of being a double agent. The evidence against her was virtually non-existent, and the prosecution found not a single item or piece of information passed from Mata Hari to the Germans. The trial itself was of dubious nature as her defence was prohibited from cross-examining witnesses. Her defence lawyer was a 74-year-old man, a former lover, and his association with Hari diminished his authority. The six-man jury had little hesitation in finding Mata Hari guilty.

And shot

At dawn on 15 October 1917, Mata Hari, wearing a three-cornered hat, was led out of her cell to face her death. She told an attendant nun, ‘Do not be afraid, sister, I know how to die.’ She refused to be tied to the stake or blindfolded, and waved at onlookers and blew kisses at the priest and her lawyer. She was shot by a 12-man firing squad, each wearing a red fez. The officer in charge ensured she was dead by firing a bullet into her head. She was 41.

Thirty years later, one of the prosecutors admitted that ‘there wasn’t enough evidence [against Mata Hari] to flog a cat.’

Rupert Colley.

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Hitler had come to power in January 1933 and immediately started, piece by piece, tearing up the Weimar constitution, squashing opposition and ridding Germany of democracy.

The End of Democracy

In the last parliamentary elections of the Weimar Republic, in March 1933, the Nazis polled 44% of the vote – not enough for a majority but enough to squash any future political resistance. Within a fortnight Hitler proposed the Enabling Act, a temporary dissolution of the constitution whilst he dealt with the problems facing the nation. The Reichstag passed the proposal by 441 votes to 84. There would be no more elections or a constitution to keep Hitler in check. The Reichstag had, in effect, voted away its own power.

The temporary became permanent. Within a matter of weeks, it had become illegal to criticize the government. A new secret police force, the Gestapo, immediately began arresting ‘unreliable’ persons, and Dachau, the first concentration camp, was opened to cater for their custody. Trade unions were banned, freedom of the press curtailed, and all other political parties declared illegal. Germany had become a one-party state with Hitler its leader, and soon its dictator.

Ernst Rohm

A year later, with Hitler’s power almost absolute, only the excesses of the SA 
and their bull-necked leader, Ernst Rohm (pictured), troubled the dictator. Their violence, which as a revolutionary during the 1920s, Hitler would have endorsed, had become an embarrassment to the Chancellor. Having gained power through the proper process Hitler wanted to win over the German people and international opinion through legitimate means not by force.

But Rohm and the SA felt that Hitler was going soft and had not given them their due reward for helping the Nazis into power. They started talking of a ‘second revolution’ with Rohm the leader of the People’s Party, greatly alarming the industrialists and businessmen that Hitler had managed to woo. Rohm wanted also to merge the army with the SA under his command, which, in turn, alarmed the army and its chief, Werner von Blomberg.

In April 1934, Hitler and Blomberg signed a secret pact: Hitler promised Blomberg and the army full control of the military (ahead of Rohm’s SA); and, in return, Blomberg promised Hitler the army’s support when the time came for Hitler to claim the presidency following the anticipated death of 86-year-old Paul von Hindenburg.

Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goring, who also feared Rohm, concocted false evidence that Rohm was planning a coup against Hitler. The SA’s agitation was beginning to undermine the country’s stability, and Hindenburg threatened to bring in martial law unless Hitler could bring the situation under control. In other words – deal with Rohm and the SA.

Hitler acts

On the weekend of 30 June – 1 July 1934, in what was to become known as the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, Hitler acted. Members of the SS stormed a hotel in the village of Bad Wiessee where the SA had gathered for a weekend of homosexual debauchery, pulled Rohm and his henchmen from their beds and had them arrested. Most were promptly executed on the spot, except for Rohm. Hitler took it upon himself to arrest Rohm personally, marching into his hotel room and, brandishing a revolver, yelled, “You’re under arrest, you pig”.

Rohm was taken to a Munich prison, along with other SA leaders, and there awaited his fate. But Hitler, in a fit of nostalgia, found it difficult to order his murder. Instead, he offered Rohm the chance to kill himself. On 1 July, a revolver was left on the table in his cell and he was given ten minutes. Rohm refused, saying, ‘If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself’. When the ten minutes had elapsed and no shot heard, an SS officer marched in and killed the bare-chested Rohm at point-blank range.

Hitler took the opportunity to purge anyone whom he disliked or had crossed him in the past, including the last Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Kurt von Schleicher. The Night of the Long Knives claimed over 200 lives. Hindenburg congratulated his chancellor for having acted so swiftly. The army, relieved to be freed from its main rival, sided with Hitler, and Blomberg applauded “the Fuhrer’s soldierly decision and exemplary courage”.

All Hitler had to do now was to wait for old Hindenburg to die. He did not have long to wait.

Rupert Colley.

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to Nazi Germany, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Imre Nagy was born 7 June 1896 in the town of Kaposvár in southern Hungary. He worked as a locksmith before joining the Austrian-Hungary army during the First World War. In 1915, he was captured and spent much of the war as a prisoner of war in Russia. He escaped and having converted to communism, joined the Red Army and fought alongside the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Agriculture

In 1918, Nagy returned to Hungary as a committed communist and served the short-lived Soviet Republic established by Bela Kun in Hungary. Following its collapse in August 1919, after only five months, Nagy, as with other former members of Kun’s regime, lived underground, liable to arrest. Eventually, in 1928, he fled to Austria and from there, in 1930, to the Soviet Union, where he spent the next fourteen years studying agriculture.

Following the Second World War, Nagy returned again to Hungary serving as Minister of Agriculture in Hungary’s post-war communist government. Loyal to Stalin, Nagy led the charge of collectivization, redistributing the land of landowners to the peasants.

Prime Minister

In July 1953, four months after Stalin’s death and with the Soviet Union’s approval, Nagy was appointed prime minister, replacing the unpopular and ruthless, Mátyás Rákosi (pictured). Rákosi, ‘Stalin’s Best Hungarian Disciple’, had been responsible for a reign of terror in which some 2,000 Hungarians were executed and up to 100,000 imprisoned. Nagy tried to usher in a move away from Moscow’s influence and introduce a period of liberalism and political and economic reform. This, as far as the Kremlin was concerned, was setting a bad example to other countries within the Eastern Bloc. Nagy quickly became too popular for the Kremlin’s liking and in April 1955 Rákosi was put back in charge and the terror and oppression started anew. Seven months later, Nagy was expelled from the communist party altogether.

Hungarian Revolution

On 23 October 1956, the people of Hungary rose up against their government and its Soviet masters. The Hungarian Revolution had begun. Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow sent the tanks in to restore order while the rebels demanded the return of Imre Nagy. Khrushchev relented and Nagy was back in control, calling for calm and promising political reform, while, around him, the Soviets tanks tried to quash the uprising. On 28 October, Khrushchev withdrew the tanks, and for a few short days, the people of Hungary wondered whether they had won.

On 1 November, Nagy boldly announced his intentions: he promised to release political prisoners, including Cardinal Mindszenty (pictured), notoriously imprisoned by Rakosi’s regime; he promised to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact; that Hungary would become a neutral nation; and he promised open elections and an end to one-party rule. Two days later, he went so far as to announce members of a new coalition government, which included a number of non-communists. This was all too much for the Kremlin. If Nagy delivered on these reforms, what sort of message would it send to other members of the Eastern Bloc – its very foundation would be at risk?

On 4 November, Khrushchev sent the tanks back in; this time in far greater numbers. Nagy appealed to the West. While the US condemned the Soviet attack as a ‘monstrous crime’, it did nothing, distracted by presidential elections; while Britain and France were in the midst of their own calamity, namely the Suez Crisis. Anyway, the West was never going to risk war for the sake of Hungary.

The Hungarian Uprising was crushed. Nagy was replaced by Janos Kadar, a man loyal to Moscow, and who would remain in charge of Hungary for the next 32 years, until ill health forced his retirement in May 1988.

Secret Trial

Nagy knew he was in danger and sought refuge in the Yugoslavian Embassy in Budapest. Despite receiving a written assurance from Kadar guaranteeing him safe passage out of Hungary, on 22 November 1956, Nagy, along with others, was kidnapped by Soviet agents as he tried to leave the embassy. He was smuggled out of the country and taken to Romania.

Two years later, Nagy was secreted back into Hungary and along with his immediate colleagues, put on trial. The trial, which lasted from 9 to 15 June, was tape-recorded in its entirety – 52 hours. Charged with high treason and of attempting to overthrow the supposedly legally-recognised Hungarian government, Nagy was found guilty and sentenced to death.

On 16 June 1958, Imre Nagy was hanged; his body dumped, face down, in an unmarked grave.  He was 62.

1989

Exactly thirty-one years later, on 16 June 1989, Imre Nagy and his colleagues were rehabilitated, reinterred, and afforded a public funeral. The whole of the country observed a minute’s silence. Six coffins were placed on the steps of the Exhibition Hall in Budapest’s Heroes Square. One coffin was empty – representative of all revolutionaries that had fallen in ’56.

It was an emotional and symbolic event attended by over 100,000 people. The writing was on the wall for Hungary’s communist rulers. Sure enough, on the 33rd anniversary of the start of the revolution, 23 October 1989, the People’s Republic of Hungary was replaced by the Republic of Hungary with a provisional parliamentary president in place. The road to democracy was swift – parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 24 March 1990, the first free elections to be held in the country since 1945. The totalitarian government was finished – Hungary, at last, was free.

Meanwhile, on 6 July 1989, the Hungarian judicial acquitted Imre Nagy of high treason. The very same day, Janos Kadar died.

Rupert Colley

Read more about the revolution in The Hungarian Revolution, 1956, available as ebook and paperback (124 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Alexander II had been a reformer and a liberal, introducing 20 years earlier the emancipation of the serfs and keen to introduce a raft of new reforms. In consequence of the tsar’s violent end, his son and the new tsar, Alexander III, undid much of Alexander II’s reforms, suppressed liberalism and brought back the full force of autocracy.

The new tsar intended to start teaching his son the art of statesmanship once Nicholas had reached the age of 30. But on 1 November 1894, aged only 49, Alexander III died of kidney disease. His son was still only 26. Thus, following the death of his father, Nicholas was thrust unprepared into the limelight. Fearful of the responsibility that was now his to bear, he reputedly asked, ‘What will become of me and all of Russia?’

The Khodynka Tragedy

From the start, the omens were not good. Four days after his coronation on 26 May 1896, Nicholas II and his wife of 18 months, Alix of Hesse, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, attended the public celebration held in their honour in Khodynka Field, on the outskirts of Moscow. 100,000 people gathered to enjoy the coronation festivities but a stampede caused the death of 1,389. Many more were injured. In a state of shock, Nicholas wished to pray for the dead. But he was persuaded by his advisors to attend a planned gala at the French embassy, arguing that not insulting the ambassador was more important than praying for his subjects. His subsequent attendance may have soothed the ambassador’s vanity but it showed the new tsar in the worst possible light. He later visited the injured in hospital and donated vast sums to help the affected families. But the damage had been done.

Nicholas II ruled as his father had done. But whereas his father had been a physically domineering man, strong, brash and confident, Nicholas was slight, unsure of himself and prone to agree with whoever spoke to him last. Although aware of his own weakness, once describing himself as ‘without will and without character’, Nicholas II saw his rule as one sanctioned by God – ‘I regard Russia as one big estate, with the tsar as its owner’, he said in 1902. Nicholas could speak English with a refined accent and was known as the ‘most civil man in Europe’.

The Romanov dynasty had ruled Russia and its empire since 1613. Nicholas II would prove to be its last tsar. His wife, Alix of Hesse, was German, which caused considerable disquiet amongst his nationalistic subjects. Her attempts to become more Russian, changing her name to Alexandra and accepting the Russian Orthodox faith, did little to overturn their prejudice.

Bloody Sunday

The seeds of the tsar’s downfall began on 22 January 1905, ‘Bloody Sunday’, when he was held responsible for turning on his own people and gunning down unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. His half-hearted efforts to appease the masses by replacing his autocracy with a constitutional monarchy did little to ease the widening discontent throughout the empire. Nicholas, deeply anti-Semitic, was quick to blame Jews for the country’s discontent. During the strikes of 1905, he wrote to his mother, ‘Nine out of ten troublemakers were Jews’.

Having witnessed another assassination, this time of his uncle, the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich on 17 February 1905, Nicholas II withdrew from public life, affecting further his popularity. His credibility was not helped by allowing his wife to become overly dependent on the mystic, Grigori Rasputin, who seemed to be the only one able to stem the bleeding of his haemophiliac son, the tsarevich Alexei.

Following early defeats during the First World War, Nicholas took personal command of his army and left the everyday administration of government to his wife. It was a mistake – every Russian setback was now his responsibility; as commander, the tsar took the blame. Meanwhile, his wife’s nationality and her continued reliance on Rasputin earned the Imperial Family much criticism, both within the Russian parliament, the Duma, and among the general population. Russia’s appalling record in the war, and the amount of territory lost to the Germans on its Western borders, further discredited the monarchy.

The Tsar’s Abdication

Strikes broke out, first in Petrograd (formerly St Petersburg), then other cities, but Nicholas II failed to judge the import of the situation and refused to leave his command post at the front. On 11 March, the Chairman of the Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko, sent the tsar a desperate telegram, ‘The situation is serious. Measures must be taken at once; tomorrow will be too late. The capital is in a state of anarchy; troops of the Petrograd garrison cannot be relied upon. The Government is powerless to stop the disorder… General discontent is growing… Your majesty, do not delay. Any procrastination is tantamount to death.’ Nicholas wrote in his diary, ‘this fat Rodzianko has written me lots of nonsense, to which I shall not even deign to reply’. Nicholas did, however, do as he had warned – on 12 March, he dissolved the Duma.

Finally, Nicholas decided to return to Petrograd – but it was too late. On 15 March 1917, the tsar was forced to abdicate, thus ending the three-century-old Romanov dynasty. Few mourned its passing.

The British government had wanted to offer Nicholas II and his family asylum but King George V, the tsar’s cousin, refused, fearing that the presence of the fallen tsar in Britain could cause trouble.

The House of Special Purpose

Following the tsar’s abdication, the Imperial Family (pictured in 1913) was kept under house arrest first in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, 15 miles south of Petrograd, then, from August 1917, in Tobolsk in Western Siberia. In April 1918, they were transferred to Yekaterinburg in the Urals and kept in a former merchant’s house, known by the Bolsheviks obscurely as the ‘House of Special Purpose’.

Meanwhile, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin, seized power.

In July 1918, a legion of Czech troops was closing in on the town, and the Bolsheviks, fearing the Romanovs might be rescued and become a rallying point for their enemies, decided to act, probably under the orders of Vladimir Lenin. Around midnight on 17 July 1918, the family was awakened, told to get dressed and washed, and taken down to the basement of the house.

Alexandra’s request for a couple of chairs was granted. The former royal couple sat down, with the 13-year-old Alexei sitting on his father’s lap (both wore soldiers’ shirts and caps) and the girls gathered behind their mother. Also with them, the family doctor and three servants that had remained loyal to the last. Yakov Yurovsky, in charge of the house, led in a squad of executioners and read a short statement announcing the order for execution. An incredulous Nicholas said, ‘What?’ before being shot dead by Yurovsky. The squad then opened fire. Alexandra and her daughters had, over the weeks, sewn their jewellery into their undergarments (lest they could be used for bartering at some point) and thus to a degree were protected from the bullets. But they were finished off by bayonet and finally a shot each to the head.

The following day, Lenin announced to a Danish newspaper that the tsar was well and that rumours concerning his death were ‘lies put out by the capitalist press’.

Initially dumped down a mineshaft, the bodies were hastily buried in nearby forests. Their exact location remained a mystery until their discovery in 1979, although it would be another 19 years before DNA confirmed their identification. On 18 July 1998, exactly 80 years after their execution, the family was given a state funeral and a Christian burial and, in August 2000, the tsar was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Rupert Colley.

Read more Soviet / Russian history in The Clever Teens’ Guide to the Russian Revolution (80 pages) available as paperback and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Thomas Highgate was born in Shoreham in Kent on 13 May 1895. In February 1913, aged 17, he joined the Royal West Kent Regiment. Within months, Highgate fell foul of the military authorities – in 1913, he was upbraided for being late for Tattoo, and ‘exchanging duties without permission’. In early 1914, he was reprimanded for having a rusty rifle and deserting for which he received the punishment of forty-eight days detention.

First Battle of the Marne

On 5 September, the first day of the Battle of the Marne and the 35th day of the war, Private Highgate’s nerves got the better of him and he fled the battlefield. He hid in a barn in the village of Tournan, a few miles south of the river, and was discovered wearing civilian clothes by a gamekeeper who happened to be English and an ex-soldier. Quite where Highgate obtained his civilian clothes is not recorded but the gamekeeper spotted his uniform lying in a heap nearby. Highgate confessed, ‘I have had enough of it, I want to get out of it and this is how I am going to do it’.

Having been turned in, Highgate was tried by a court-martial for desertion. The trial, presided over by three officers, was brief. Highgate did not speak and was not represented. He was found guilty. At 6.20 on the morning of 8 September, Highgate was informed that he would be executed. The execution was carried out fifty minutes later – at 7.07, he was shot by firing squad.

Highgate’s name is shown on the British memorial to the missing at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre on the south bank of the River Marne. The memorial features the names of over 3,000 British soldiers with no known grave.

Shoreham

By the time the war had ended, Highgate’s parents had moved away from Shoreham, settling in Crayford in southeast London. Highgate had four brothers, two of whom were also killed during the war. Their names, including that of Thomas, appear on the Sidcup war memorial.

In 2000, the parish council in Highgate’s home village of Shoreham replaced its war memorial plaque bearing the names of those who had fallen during the war of 1914-1918 as the original had become worn. The original did not include Highgate’s name simply because, as mentioned, the family had moved away. Nonetheless, in 2000, after some debate, the council voted not to include Highgate’s name on the replacement plaque. However, a space was left should, at some point in the future, the people of Shoreham want his name added.

But Highgate is not alone. A correspondent informed me that “eight other lads who were born in Shoreham and fought in the war, died and are not on the Memorial”.

In November 2006, the UK government pardoned all 306 servicemen executed in the First World War but, at the time of writing (May 2015), the name Thomas Highgate still does not feature on Shoreham’s war memorial.

Rupert Colley.

The post The first British soldier executed during World War One – Thomas Highgate first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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The war was going badly for Italy, the Allies had landed in Sicily and the future looked bleak.

Mussolini’s last plea

On July 24, 1943, at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Benito Mussolini delivered an impassioned two-hour speech, exhorting his fellow fascists to put up a fight. His plea fell on deaf ears, the Council instead voting to propose peace with the Allies.

Dismissed

The daring rescue

On September 12, 1943 on Hitler’s orders, Mussolini was rescued from his mountainside captivity by SS paratroopers and whisked away to Germany in a glider. Having met with Hitler, Mussolini was returned to Italy and set up as the head of a Fascist republic in German-occupied northern Italy.

The execution of Mussolini

But by April 1945, with the Allies advancing north through Italy, Mussolini knew the end was in sight. Together with his mistress, Clara Petacci (pictured), and a few followers, Mussolini fled and headed for the Swiss border. Stopped by Italian partisans on April 26, Mussolini’s attempts to disguise himself with a Luftwaffe overcoat and helmet had failed.

On April 28, 1945, at the picturesque Lake Como, the partisans stopped the car; pushed Mussolini and Petacci out, and ordered them against a wall. Whilst the partisans pronounced the death sentence, Petacci flung her arms around Mussolini and screamed, “No, he mustn’t die.” Petacci was shot and fell. Mussolini ripped open his jacket and screamed, ‘Shoot me in the chest!’ The executioner, a communist partisan by the name of Walter Audisio, did so. Mussolini fell but was not dead. Another bullet in the chest ensured that he was. The bodies were heaped into the back of a van, together with those of Mussolini’s last followers, and transported to Milan.

A rusty beam

Their bodies were delivered to the Piazzale Loreto, the scene of a mass execution of partisans the year before. The corpses were beaten and urinated upon and finally left to hang upside down, for public display, from a rusty beam outside a petrol station. Petacci had not been wearing knickers and a group of old women rearranged her skirt to preserve her modesty. People surged around, desperate to get a look, to laugh and spit upon them, wanting to make sure that it was true: Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy for 23 years, was truly dead and Italy could live again.

Two days later, Hitler was also dead.

Rupert Colley.

Read more about WW2 in The Clever Teens’ Guide to World War Two available as ebook and paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

The post The Execution of Mussolini – an outline first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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Exactly one month after the assassination, Europe was at war, a war that quickly spread and became the Great War, or, as we know it, the First World War. And from the post-war seeds of discontent came the rise of Nazism and the road to the Second World War.

Born to an impoverished family in Bosnia on 25 July 1894, Gavrilo Princip was one of nine children, six of whom died during infancy. Suffering from tuberculosis, the frail and slight Princip learned to read, the first in his family to do so, and devoured the histories of the Serbs and their oppression at the hands of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires.

The Black Hand

In 1911, a friend of Gavrilo Princip’s, Bogdan Zerajic, had tried to assassinate the Austrian-Hungarian governor of Bosnia. He failed and ended up shooting himself. But it provided the young Princip with inspiration. He tried to enlist in various terrorist groups but was turned down due to his short stature

Eventually, he was accepted and tasked to join a group called the Black Hand. Its explicit purpose was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The opportunity – the occasion of the archduke’s visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, due for 28 June 1914.

The plan was known to the Serbian prime minister. Although sympathetic, he feared the consequences and ordered the arrest of the Black Hand conspirators. Fatefully, his orders came too late.

Princip and a handful of his Black Hand comrades arrived, each armed with a revolver, a bomb and, in the event of failure, a vial of cyanide. They joined, at various intervals, the throng of onlookers lined along a six-kilometre route and waited for the six-car motorcade to come into view. The first two would-be assassins lost their nerve, whilst the third managed to throw his bomb causing injury to a driver but leaving the archduke and his wife unharmed. Racked with a sense of failure, Princip trudged to a nearby tavern.

The Wrong Turn

The archduke, having delivered a speech, decided to visit the wounded driver in hospital. On his way, his driver took a wrong turn down a one-way street, a street named after Franz Ferdinand’s uncle, the emperor Franz Joseph, along which was a tavern. And in that tavern – Gavrilo Princip. Princip, astonished to see the royal car, acted on impulse. As the driver tried to engage the reverse gear, Princip jumped onto the running board and fired two shots.

Having assassinated the archduke and his wife, Gavrilo Princip tried to shoot himself but was wrestled to the ground where again he tried to kill himself by swallowing his cyanide pill. But the poison, so old, failed to work. The photograph was taken by one Milos Oberajger, an amateur photographer.

At the time of the assassination, Gavrilo Princip was a month short of his twentieth birthday. His age saved him from execution as Austrian-Hungarian law decreed that the death penalty could not be applied to those aged under 20. After a 12-day trial, Princip was sentenced instead to the maximum penalty of twenty years. While in prison, he suffered a resurgence of his tuberculosis and, due to poor hygiene and inadequate diet, had to have an arm amputated. His condition worsened and he died in the prison hospital, aged 23, on 28 April 1918.

Rupert Colley.

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The sepoys had been issued with a new Enfield rifle. In order to use the rifle, the soldier had to bite off the end of a lubricated cartridge before inserting the powder into the weapon. The problem was that the grease used to seal the cartridge was made from animal fat – both cow, a sacred beast to Hindus, and pork, an insult to the Muslim soldiers.

The East India Company, the monolithic, monopolising commercial company that conducted trade in India and had become the de facto rulers of India acting on behalf of the British government, made amends by substituting the forbidden fats with that of sheep or beeswax. Too late. The sepoys saw it as a deliberate ploy to undermine their respective religions and to convert them, through this perfidious route, to Christianity. The fact this was not the case did nothing to squash the rumour.

The first symptom of unrest came in January 1857, when the recently-opened telegraph office in Barrackpore (now Barrackpur, about 15 miles from Kolkata, or Calcutta) was burned down as a protest against the march of Westernization.

Two months later, on 29 March 1857, also at Barrackpore, a 29-year-old sepoy called Mangal Pandey, staged, in effect, a one-man rebellion. Born 19 July 1827, Mangal Pandey had joined the 34th Bengal Native Infantry regiment of the British East India Company, aged 22, in 1849.

Religious frenzy

Mangal Pandey (pictured), apparently stoned with opium and brandishing a sword and a musket on a parade ground, urged his fellow sepoys to rebel and vowed to kill the first white person he saw. Sure enough, when a mounted British officer appeared on the scene, Pandey shot at him but managed only to fell the horse. He then slashed at the officer with his sword, injuring him, and next wounding the officer’s adjutant. Another officer ordered a junior native officer to subdue and arrest Pandey but was met with refusal.

An officer in charge, General Hearsey, who later described Pandey as having being in the throes of a ‘religious frenzy’, appeared on the scene and, waving his pistol, managed to restore order. Pandey, finding himself alone, turned his musket on himself, pressed it against his chest, and, using his toe, pulled the trigger. Although injured and having set his tunic ablaze, he failed to kill himself and was promptly arrested.

Court Martial

Pandey was court martialled on 6 April. At his hearing he insisted he had acted alone and in the name of India. He was due to be hanged on 18 April but the British, fearful of further unrest, brought forward the date of execution and Pandey was hanged on 8 April 1857.

Deemed unreliable and a disgrace, Pandey’s regiment was disbanded but Pandey had become a martyr to the rebels’ cause.

127 years later, on 5 October 1984, the Indian government issued a stamp commemorating Mangal Pandey and his solitary act of defiance.

The post Mangal Pandey – a brief biography first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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