The Idealists: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia Book

The Revolution was a time in Russia when long-suppressed hopes suddenly seemed attainable. In that brief moment, Russians recognized that these hopes were either to become realities or be crushed.

The Idealists is the story of Marina Nevsky and her family. Born in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, Marina knows only the revolutionary milieu of her exiled parents. Her father, Vasily Nevsky, is the large-spirited, idealistic head of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which for decades has fought for the betterment of the downtrodden. Though in exile, Nevsky has watched the turn of events in Russia with close attention, waiting for the perfect moment to return and establish a democratic order. But when the time comes in 1917, Nevsky returns to St. Petersburg only to find his moment of opportunity usurped by a small Marxist party, the Bolsheviks, who succeed in taking control of this starved, war-devastated country as it emerges form centuries of tyranny under the tsars. Vasily Nevsky and his family return to a home that will not have them, and an archrival, Lenin, set on destroying him.

Marina will witness everything to which her father has dedicated his life vanish in the turmoil of the time. It is within this tumultuous landscape that she comes of age. Populated by such real-life figures as Kerensky, Trotsky, Gorky, and Lenin, The Idealists brings the world of the Nevsky family and that of a nation in the midst of great change to vivid life. This stunning novel of revolutionary Russia draws upon the experience of Olga Andreyev Carlisle's family in Russia during that period. In The Idealists she and her husband, Henry, have recreated those intense years as seen through the eyes of a young woman.