The Revolution's Child
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SYNOPSIS
OF
THE REVOLUTION’S CHILD
BY MARINA AVTONOMOVA
Saint Petersburg, Russia, 1913. As the clouds of the First World War and the Russian Revolution approach, eighteen-year old Sophia Gurova marries Prince Alexandr Orlov. Despite the glittering wedding ceremony, the young Princess Orlova is deeply unhappy, for she has been pressured into the marriage by her parents and by society. She realizes she does not love her new husband and that her life as a wealthy socialite is a complete sham.
That very evening, Sophia Orlova meets Sergey Moiseyev, a brilliant young Jewish painter. It is love at first sight and Sergey makes no secret of his feelings for Sophia. She appears to reject him but knows she is irresistibly drawn to him. For months, she fights her desperate yearning for him, aware that she is waging a losing battle.
Soon, Sergey, as well as Sophia and her family are caught up in the tide of events. World War I breaks out and the Bolsheviks fan the fires of Revolution. As Saint Petersburg society attempts to ignore impending doom, Sophia and Sergey are brought together by a dramatic turn of events, the Nevsky Prospekt massacre. A group of peaceful protesters march on the Winter Palace. The Tsar’s elite Cossack regiment fires on the marchers, killing many and wreaking havoc. When Kiril Gurov, Sophia’s brother, loses a close friend in the confrontation, he joins the rebels and becomes a zealous Bolshevik.
Sophia Orlova’s life begins to unravel as the Revolution destroys the world she has known as a child. Revolutionary terror strikes at her family when her husband, Alexandr, is seriously injured and his mother killed by a bomb that had been planted by her beloved brother Kiril himself. Sophia and Kiril meet one last time when he furtively visits the Orlov mansion. Sophia, pregnant with Sergey’s baby, extracts a promise from her brother – if she dies, he will bring the child up.
As Sophia’s time approaches, Alexandr discovers Sophia’s infidelity and throws her out. She barely succeeds in reaching Sergey’s studio, where she dies giving birth to their daughter, christened Sophia in her mother’s honour. True to his word, Kiril Gurov tracks his dead sister’s lover down. Sergey, aware that he has to flee Russia and cannot ensure his daughter’s safety, hands her over to her uncle. As Kiril takes her in a final gesture of farewell and reconciliation, she now becomes the revolution’s child.
Along with his daughter, Sergey leaves behind his two magnificent paintings of Sophia Orlova. His family and his world destroyed, he leaves Russia for an uncertain destiny.
We meet Sergey again in post-World War II Paris, where he is now an established and well-known painter. Despite his success and the passage of time, the pain of exile and the brutal separation from his daughter are still very much with him. Of his child, he knows nothing and, although he often ponders her fate, he knows the Iron Curtain is firmly in place and the Soviet Union is off limits to him forever.
Fate, however, will prove him wrong, and fate appears in the person of a young and beautiful Parisian socialite, Countess Marina de Montmorency.
In the meantime, Sophia – Sergey Moiseyev and Sophia Orlova’s daughter – has grown up in Moscow as a member of the new aristocracy called the Nomenklatura. She knows nothing of her birth parents, as her uncle and adoptive father Kiril considers it safer to keep her aristocratic background secret in Stalin’s Russia. Kiril is now married to a respected doctor and they form a model Soviet family, or so Sophia believes until World War II shatters her cosy little dream.
We meet her again on the front, where she is working as a nurse. A gravely wounded tank commander is brought into her care. She discovers that his name is David Abramov and that, in civilian life, he is a theatre and film director. As she falls in love with him, she also rediscovers another love – the theatre. War and its tragic consequences separate David and Sophia for six long years.
David Abramov has reawakened Sophia Gurova’s passion for acting. When, through a friend, she meets Olga Knipper – Anton Chekhov’s widow and one of the founding actresses of the Moscow Art Theatre – her fate is sealed. Olga takes her to audition for the leading role of Nina in Chekhov’s The Seagull. Watching from the wings is the director of the production, David Abramov. As the couple meet again, their mutual attraction grows. Sophia triumphs on stage and soon marries David.
Her newfound happiness, however, is marred by Kiril’s death of cancer. On his deathbed, he reveals her true background to her and begs her to forgive him .
Kiril’s death brings with it new uncertainties. In the Byzantine world of Soviet politics, the dead apparatchik's enemies lie in wait, and Sophia and David begin to fear for their lives and
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About the Book
"The Revolution’s Child" is an historical novel set in Russia as it metamorphosed over 70 years from monarchy, through dictatorship to republic. It is a gripping love story involving Sophia Orlova, a young aristocrat and her lover, Sergey Moiseyev, a brilliant Jewish painter. The saga takes the reader through the upheaval of the Russian Revolution, the bitter pain of exile, the iron hand of Soviet dictatorship to the dawning of a new era of democracy in Russia. With its unexpected twists and turns, skilfully intertwining historical events and personal tragedies, this novel is a compelling page-turner.
About the Author
Marina Avtonomova holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Columbia University, New York, is the daughter of Russian émigrés who shared their personal experiences and suffering with her during her childhood as well as passing on to her a fluent mastery of their language. She has spent 30 years as an English conference interpreter with the UN in New York and Geneva and, at this latter duty station, has been able to perfect her knowledge of French so all the dialogue is drawn from her firsthand knowledge of these languages and the cultures from which they come. She is not, however, unpublished as – despite the embargo enforced on all UN employees, forbidding them to express any personal opinions – she did, some years ago, manage to publish a political thriller, unmasking the corruption that haunts the corridors of that organisation. She is a permanent resident of Switzerland where she has lived since 1976, is married and has a daughter who lives and works in London.