Hot on the heels of World Book Day, we are “Realizing Women’s Rights” on Sunday.
One of the themes in Churchill’s Abandoned Prisoners is women in the Russian Civil War. In May 1918, women’s food protests sparked the first wave of worker’s unrest against the new Bolshevik authority in Petrograd. Later in the war, tireless women of all classes put their menfolk to shame as they stood up to the Red Army and sustained the orthodox faith.
The resistant spirit of Russian women was observed by many of the British soldiers in Siberia, who held them in awe and wrote about the strength of their character. Apart from the bravery and magnificent work of the Red Cross nurses, my book includes inspiring examples of superior female mental fortitude, witnessed by the British PoWs in Siberia, Moscow and Petrograd during their ordeal in 1920.
Rupert Wieloch 