Russia in the Bolshevik-era setting enters the novel less as a continuously depicted landscape than as a force reshaping political expectation. Reports of Bolshevik success excite hopes for a world revolution; talk of oil and mandates recasts the country as an object of international competition; and a newsreel account of the imperial family’s execution gives revolutionary upheaval its starkest human form. These sharply different views make Russia at once a political possibility, a contested resource frontier, and the setting of a regime’s destruction.

Revolution as a Horizon

When Don Stevens arrives on leave, Eveline Hutchins finds him exhilarated by the Bolsheviks’ success. His excitement is not limited to Russia: he speaks of underground forces, claims that armies are mutinous, and imagines revolt spreading across the front. He links the possibility of a wider uprising to Caporetto and to reports of German soldiers ready to rebel. The Russian revolution thus functions in his account as a beginning, a precedent that might turn the war into the opening of a new socialist civilization.

Don’s certainty has both political and personal force. He tells Eveline that the working classes will no longer tolerate the existing order and argues that the war might have been worthwhile if it produced a new society. He kisses her in front of Yvonne, turning his revolutionary confidence into an intimate declaration as well as a public political performance. The scene gives his hopes energy, but the surrounding narrative does not establish that his predictions are true. Russia appears through his impassioned interpretation, which transforms distant political news into a forecast of imminent change everywhere.

Russia in Political Rumor

Later, in Paris, Russia is discussed in a markedly different register. After the opera, Eveline and Eleanor sit with J.W. Moorehouse and Mr. Rasmussen at the Café de la Paix. Rasmussen, an engineer with Standard Oil, is preoccupied with Baku, Mosul, and the competition between American, British, and Dutch oil interests in the Near East. He argues that Britain is gaining ground against the United States and that the unresolved mandates could shape access to oil and political influence. His claims place Russia within a postwar contest in which national self-determination, imperial control, and commercial advantage overlap.

The conversation makes clear that Russia is not merely a revolutionary ideal in this setting. When Eveline asks about the Russians’ claim to Baku, Rasmussen invokes self-determination and the region’s Turkish and Armenian population, then says that he would prefer the reds to the British, though he does not expect them to last. His position is revealingly conditional: political principles matter, but they are weighed against the prospect of rival powers controlling the oil supply. The discussion is also not an authoritative account of Russian politics. Rasmussen speaks from his professional concern with petroleum and American interests, while J.W. says the question of mandates remains unsettled.

That uncertainty sharpens when Rasmussen claims to have reliable information that Lenine and Trotsky have split and that the monarchy will be restored within three months. The prediction is presented as his assertion, not as a confirmed outcome. Its confident precision contrasts with Don’s expansive revolutionary expectation: one man imagines a socialist transformation spreading outward, while the other anticipates a rapid reversal inside Russia. Both make the country a screen for hopes and forecasts that the novel leaves in tension rather than resolving through their speeches.

The Imperial Household’s Execution

A newsreel passage gives the Russian upheaval a different scale and texture. In a basement room, members of the imperial household are assembled in a semicircle along the wall after being summoned by commissaries. The young grand duchesses tremble at the unusual orders and the gloomy hour; they suspect what the officials have come to do. Yarodsky tells the czar that all must die because the continued existence of the ruling family endangers the revolution, framing their removal as a duty to Russian patriots.

The scene then narrows from political justification to individual reactions. The czar answers that he is ready. The czarina clings to him, briefly releasing her hold to make the sign of the cross; Olga and Dr. Botkin follow her example. The czarevitch stands paralyzed with fear, while his sisters and the other grand duchesses sink to the floor trembling. The account does not turn the execution into an abstract symbol alone: its formal announcement of political necessity is set against gestures of faith, terror, and familial attachment. Russia’s change of power is rendered as a decision made by armed officials and experienced by a household facing imminent death.

A Contested Political and Economic Space

Together, these passages refuse a single, settled image of Russia. For Don, it is the apparent source of a revolutionary future; in Rasmussen’s conversation, it is part of an unsettled contest over Baku, oil, mandates, and national claims; in the newsreel, it is the scene of the ruling family’s destruction. The differing accounts also have different degrees of certainty. Don extrapolates from reports of Bolshevik success, Rasmussen advances a prediction about restoration, and the newsreel presents the commissaries’ announcement and the family’s reactions as a completed scene.

The novel’s form matters to this portrait. Russia is reached through a leave-time conversation, a late-night discussion in a Paris café, and a newsreel, rather than through one continuous sequence of on-the-ground observation. Political enthusiasm, commercial calculation, and recorded violence therefore remain distinct voices. Their juxtaposition shows how a revolution can circulate internationally as hope, rumor, strategic concern, and human catastrophe—without allowing any one of those frames to contain the whole event.