In a dispatch to Ambassador Buchanan, Lockhart predicted the approaching November revolution and stated that it would cripple Russia’s ability to remain in the war: “It seems impossible that the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat can be liquidated without further bloodshed. When this clash will come no one knows, but the outlook for the war is full of foreboding.” After the November revolution, the city seemed eerily calm: “For some days life in Petrograd continued more or less normally. Shops and cinemas stayed open, and on the surface there was little indication that Russia had passed a decisive turning-point in her history.” Agreeing with Gerhardie and Ransome (Walpole had to propagate official policy), Lockhart opposed British military intervention in Russia.

In September 1918 Lockhart was accused of plotting to assassinate Lenin, arrested, imprisoned in the Kremlin and condemned to death. The following month he was fortunate enough to be exchanged for Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet representative in Britain, and permanently expelled from Russia.

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was born in Paris, the son of a lawyer at the British Embassy. Orphaned at the age of ten and with a debilitating stammer, he was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury and at Heidelberg University before qualifying as a doctor. He was an extremely successful playwright, novelist and story writer as well as a restless traveler, and had served with the Red Cross in France during the war.

“I am going to Russia,” Maugham dramatically announced in June 1917, “and shall be occupied there presumably till the end of the war.” He had taken some Russian lessons on Capri in 1905 and in a few months knew enough to read the plays of Anton Chekhov. Once in Petrograd he continued to study the language and was soon fluent enough to conduct his business in Russian. Incredibly, the relatively inexperienced Maugham, who had been a spy in wartime Switzerland, was the principal agent in Russia for the British and American secret services during the crucial few months before the Bolshevik coup in November. Sir William Wiseman, director of British espionage in Russia, sent him there alone and with only $21,000 to pay his expenses, finance newspapers and buy arms. His task — like that of the other four writers — was to support the Kerensky government, prevent the Bolshevik revolution and keep Russia in the war against Germany. He had to work independently of the Allied embassies, and planned to blow up an Austrian-owned ammunition factory and sacrifice many civilian lives. He stayed in Russia for only two-and-a-half months, and his task, with hopelessly limited resources, was impossible.

Maugham received valuable help from two Russian friends: Alexandra (Sasha) Kropotkin and Boris Savinkov. The lively, dark-haired Sasha was the daughter of the notorious anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment and escaped from Siberia. She was born in England in 1887, during her father’s years of exile, and grew up in the socialist circles of William Morris and Bernard Shaw, who knew her as a child and called her a “most lovely girl”. In London in the early years of the century, Maugham had had a short but amiable affair with Sasha that concluded with friendly feelings on both sides. Intellectually as well as sexually attractive, she served Maugham Russian tea in glasses and talked for hours about Marx and Gorky, fate, passion and the brotherhood of man. Maugham found her extremely intelligent, with an alarming love of intrigue and a lust for power. Sasha returned to Russia in 1915. In a striking contrast to the dull, shabby life she had been forced to lead in London, she was soon on intimate terms with Kerensky, and became Maugham’s main liaison and translator. She knew and had access to every important official and, by an extraordinary change of fortune, was now a powerful figure in Russia.