5 X 15 mins


Former People is a euphemism first coined in the French Revolution for their aristocracy. The same expression was adopted after the Russian Revolution for anybody regarded as a class enemy, ranging from a handful of extremely wealthy aristocrats, through nobility with titles but no wealth and down to anybody regarded as bourgeois, seemingly anybody who wore a tie to work. These people were made to suffer and kept on subsistence rations. In the 1930s, they suffered a further round of persecution under Stalin.

A fascinating account of this period of history, including vignettes such as the story of the Countess and her guests who ere forced to flee from a dinner party by the arrival of revolutionaries, only to watch the revolutionaries sitting down at the dinner table to be served by her own staff.