Letters from Russia 1919

Five dispatches written by Ouspensky in 1919 from South Russia and smuggled out to A.R. Orage's New Age, the leading literary weekly in England, where they appeared as 'Letters from Russia'. Written while Ouspensky was cut off from the outside world and in constant danger from the Bolsheviks, the letters give a detached and devastating account of the total collapse of public order — the disappearance of basic goods, the breakdown of civil life, and the transformation of ordinary experience under conditions of revolutionary terror. The letters are remarkable for two reasons: first, Ouspensky's ability to observe the catastrophe with philosophical clarity, articulating a 'Law of Opposite Aims and Results' visible in every stage of the revolution; and second, his prescient understanding, as the Bolshevik regime was still forming, of the tyranny it would become. An epilogue by C.E. Bechhofer, who spent time with Ouspensky at Rostov-on-the-Don during this period, adds a vivid personal portrait of Ouspensky in extremis. A rare historical document from a crucial period in his life.