Russia was an empire run by a particularly ill-equipped ruler who could not recognize that his style of autocratic government had run its course. Throughout the turn of the 20th Century and up to his abdication and murder, he used violence to maintain power over a restive growing middle class, poverty-stricken worker class and millions of peasants; all of whom had no say in how the country and empire was run. There were growing cracks in Nicholas II's rule such as the two aborted revolutions of 1917 brought on by the hated participation in WWI. Nicholas grudgingly agreed to provide a voice for some of the people through the formation of a parliament called The Duma, but it truly had no power. On October 7, 1918, Nicholas was overthrown and a separate peace was made with Germany. That was not the end of the internal struggles as a motley group of monarchists, republicans, autocrats and mercenaries called "White Russians" fought back against the Bolshevik and Menshevik Communists in a civil war that also saw the participation of thousands of Japanese soldiers out for a land grab in the far east as well as American, British and Canadian soldiers seeking to protect munitions abandoned when the Bolsheviks made a separate peace.
Our Russian protagonist, Leah Levy, had been radicalized in the St. Petersburg (Petrograd) factories and we follow her through the three Russian Revolutions and the assassination of the Tzar and his family as well as the Civil War.
