The Lockhart Plot: Love, Betrayal, Assassination and Counter-Revolution in Lenin's Russia

During the spring and summer of 1918, with World War I still undecided, British, French and American agents in Russia developed a breathtakingly audacious plan. Led by Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, a dashing, cynical, urbane 30-year-old Scot, they conspired to overthrow Lenin's newly established Bolshevik regime, and to install one that would continue the war against Germany on the Eastern Front. Lockhart's confidante and chief support, with whom he engaged in a passionate love affair, was the mysterious, alluring Moura von Benkendorff, wife of a former aide-de-camp to the Tsar. The plotters' chief opponent was 'Iron Felix' Dzerzhinsky. He led the Cheka, 'Sword and Shield' of the Russian Revolution and forerunner of the KGB. Dzerzhinsky loved humanity - in the abstract. He believed socialism represented humanity's best hope. To preserve and protect it he would unleash unbounded terror. Revolutionary Russia provided the setting for the ensuing contest. In the back streets of Petrograd and Moscow, in rough gypsy cabarets, in glittering nightclubs, in cells beneath the Cheka's Lubianka prison, the protagonists engaged in a deadly game of wits for the highest possible stakes - not merely life and death, but the outcome of a world war and the nature of Russia's post-war regime. Confident of success, the conspirators set the date for an uprising, September 8, 1918, but the Cheka had penetrated their organization and pounced just beforehand. The Lockhart Plot was a turning point in world history, except it failed to turn. At a time when Russian meddling in British and American politics now sounds warning bells, however, we may sense its reverberations and realize that it is still relevant.

Table of Contents:
Introduction I: Lockhart before the Fall 1: The Making of Bruce Lockhart 2: The Education of Bruce Lockhart 3: The Temptations of Bruce Lockhart II: Defenders of the Faith 4: Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky 5: Tender Jacov Peters 6: The Cheka III: Towards the Fall 7: The 'Ace of Spies' 8: First Steps Towards the Counter-Revolution 9: The Question of Moura 10: Why Lockhart turned to the Latvians 10 11: Dzerzhinsky Counters 12: Intrigue and Romance in Revolutionary Russia 13: The Lockhart Plot Takes Shape IV: The Fall 14: The Lockhart Plot 15: The Defeat of the Lockhart Plot 16: Dénouement 17: Epilogue 18: Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Jonathan Schneer was born in New York City. He earned his doctorate from Columbia University and has taught at Yale University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The recipient of numerous academic fellowships and awards, he has written seven previous books, one of which, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of Arab-Israeli Conflict, (2010), won a National Jewish Book Award. His books and articles have been translated into German, French, Turkish and Chinese. Now an emeritus professor, he divides his time between Atlanta, Georgia and Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA.

Review :
It would make a cracking Hollywood thriller ... The Lockhart Plot is terrifically entertaining. Schneer does an excellent job of evoking the paranoid atmosphere of Russia in 1918, and his book teems with colourful characters. A rollicking and thriller-like narrative that captures the chaos and turbulence of post-revolutionary Petrograd and Moscow. Schneer has made not one but several gripping narratives out of what he has been able to discover. A well-researched and well-written reminder of the pitfalls and bear-traps that governments can encounter when attempting, clandestinely, to interfere in other countries. The Lockhart Plot is suspenseful and moody. It takes readers back in time and place to meet and follow in the steps of the plotters, provides insight on Bolshevism and its believers and critics, and deftly presents conflicting views and perspectives. On top of that, it reads like a top-level spy novel. Outstanding. Schneer's portraits of the central characters are lifelike as he examines motivations that include money and opportunity as well as duty and idealism. It's a page turner. Schneer does an excellent job of untangling the thick mass of contradictory testimony, false leads, dubious sources, fake identities, double-dealing, and skullduggery to present the most complete and reliable history of Allied plotting in the first year of Soviet power. Excellent ... [This pacey] book is worth reading for its character portraits alone. A cracking book. Bruce Lockhart, debonair British secret agent, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, ruthless mastermind of the Soviet security service, face off in a deadly duel of smoke and mirrors. At stake: the fate of the Russian Revolution itself. It's an incredible story and Jonathan Schneer tells it with wit, panache and a razor-sharp historical sensibility. A brilliant examination that finally uncovers the mysteries of the Lockhart Plot. This is a well-written book: informative, fun to read, paced like a thriller, and very deeply researched in available sources.