The Idealists: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia - Softcover

Great conflicts have always provided the fodder for fiction--as epics from Homer's Odyssey to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace or Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities prove. In The Idealists, Henry Carlisle and his wife, Olga Andreyev Carlisle, take the Russian Revolution as backdrop for their tale of romance, revolutionary derring-do, and twenty-twenty historical hindsight. The main characters here are the Nevsky family: Vasily, the peasant leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party; his wife, Anna, an enlightened former member of the bourgeoisie; and their 9-year-old daughter, Marina. The action begins in 1909 and follows the family's fortunes through the start of the uprising in 1917. During the course of the novel, Vasily behaves heroically, Anna and Marina find themselves in great danger, and a parade of historical figures from Pasternak to Stalin make cameo appearances, adding verisimilitude to the proceedings. The Idealists is, in itself, an idealistic novel, presenting a portrait of Russia as poised between two alternatives: a humane revolution as personified by Vasily and the one we know from actual history. For readers in search of an entertaining historical melodrama, this book fits the bill. --Margaret Prior

"Only a literary thriller could combine these rich details with the revolutionary passion of the socialists, and only the Carlisles, who have professionally lived and studied this period, could write it." --The Los Angeles Times

"This book haunts me. It has caught, as no other work I know, the terrible innocence that helped to unleash the 20th century whirlwind. No two people are better qualified than Olga and Henry Carlisle to see this with clear eyes, compassion, great knowledge, and an almost unbearable irony." --Mary Lee Settle

"[Henry and Olga Carlisle's] collaboration has produced an exciting, beautifully written, highly readable political novel. It makes immediate the passion and energy of Russia's large-souled revolutionaries - those idealistic souls who wanted to overthrow the autocracy in favor of constitutionality and the rule of law. We know how history finally treated those who opposed the arrogance and cynicism of the Bolsheviks but the Carlisles' narrative force and vivid characterizations make us hope and almost believe at times that the inevitable tragic outcome might somehow be avoided. This is a novel of ideas that treats with timely memories, required reading for everyone interested in the history and future of Russia and concerned lest the past be repeated." --Robert Stone