Colin Welch
In January Dr George Katkov died. I read of it with anguish, not because I knew him but because I'd never met him and now never could. I re-read his masterpiece, Russia 1917: The Komilov Affair (Longman), hoping to write a modest tribute to him; but that was not to be. This extraordinary book was, so I have heard, dragged out of him, section by section, by anxious friends, holding his hand and urging him on. It is not to be commended to anyone not reasonably versed in more orthodox versions of the last years of Nicholas II, to which it supplies not so much a coherent and readily comprehensi- ble alternative as a series of dazzling correctives, new interpretations and in- sights, eye-openers and exposures of slanders and lies. For instance, Goremykin is not for Katkov a senile driveller but 'the experienced and crafty Prime Minister'. The influence of Rasputin is cut down to size, the motives of his assassins sceptically analysed. Good sense is discerned alike in the Emperor's decision to sack the Grand Duke Nicholas and assume personal com- mand of his armies, and in his low opinion, borne out by tragic events, of the liberals who momentarily supplanted him. These and countless other unusual judgments help to disinter an epoch forgotten or traduced, a fascinating historical might- have-been for long so deeply buried as to seem a never-was.
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