V D Nabokov and the Russian Provisional Government, 1917

"He was an official in the provisional government. His moment of fame was when Nicholas abdicated and he wanted the crown to go to his brother Michael. Not all that surprisingly, Michael was a bit dubious about this because he was inheriting a real can of worms. So the provisional government sent a delegation to Michael to tell him he was now the Tsar. The delegation was led by Vladimir Dimitrievich Nabokov, the father of the author. He drew up a rather equivocal statement for Michael that meant he was nominally the last Tsar of Russia though he never reigned. These are the memoirs of a well-intentioned liberal. They reflect the provisional government’s lack of resolution and ruthlessness in the face of the unscrupulous Bolshevik machine. He was involved in the great historical events of 1917 and he’d go home in the evening and talk to his son, who was 17 at the time and would become one of the century’s greatest authors. If you read the young Nabokov’s memoirs, Speak Memory , you see how much he loved his father. The Nabokov family had to go into exile after the October Revolution , but his father was still involved in émigré politics and was still friendly with Pavel Miliukov, the leader of the Constitutional Democrats, the Kadets. In 1922 they both went to Berlin to address a conference where Miliukov was speaking. Out of the audience came these two former Tsarist officers shooting at Miliukov, not at Nabokov at all. But Nabokov rather foolishly and bravely threw himself in front of Miliukov who was totally unharmed. Nabokov was shot dead. If you read Pale Fire , Nabokov Jr describes a very similar assassination in very moving terms. These memoirs are very informative but also they are a personal view of history that had a huge impact on one of the great writers of the 20th century. There is. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the last 1,000 years has been a series of missed chances and that Russia has always reverted to centralised autocracy. I think we are seeing that again now. Putin has done a good job of bringing back order after the chaos of the Yeltsin years, but he has done it partly by trampling on civil rights and democracy. But who knows? Maybe there is a paradigm shift in the offing. It’s much harder for a regime to wield monolithic autocratic power in the modern world because of the internet, communications, international pressure. Yes. I agree. But one might say there is a possibility for the West to put pressure on them. The verdict in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky on 15 December will be a key litmus test. If he’s sent to jail for the 14 years they want, then we can say that the Putinist side of the Kremlin is asserting itself. Putin wouldn’t want him ever to be released. He hates Khodorkovsky. But if there’s an equivocal sentence – if he is convicted but only given a two-year sentence to take us past the 2012 elections – or if he’s acquitted, which isn’t likely, or if he’s convicted but offered a pardon, then it would be a real sign that the liberals still have a say. Yes. It has happened to others. Maybe it is because of Khodorkovsky’s international standing. He is a man who was friends with Kissinger, George Bush, David Owen. It makes it harder for him to be murdered in jail."