An extraordinary fresh personal record of the horrors of Soviet Russia, as experienced by a young aristocrat, thrown to the wolves, as it were, after a sheltered, pampered sixteen years. Sensitive, highly strung, innocent, he is exposed to a rude awakening, is swept by inexplicable passions, untutored adolescence. He sinks lower and lower in the moral scale, cruelty, lust, depravity become tools of self-preservation. His attempt to transform himself into a Communist, his inner conflicts, the effect of the removal of all normal restraint and the imposition of the abnormal -- all this makes a fascinating and terrible psychological study. In the study of the effect of the revolution on youth, this adds new material to a crowded field. An exciting and frightening book.