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Blood and Fire, Tsar and Commissar examines The Salvation Army’s attempt in the early twentieth century to establish itself in Russia. If exhibited faith, determination and endurance in dealing with unpredictable and officialdom, police raids, epidemics and other catastrophes. Would-be law-abiding, it had to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves”, since in Russia prior to the revolution of 1917 it did not officially exist. It encountered profound, sometimes baffling, differences between Russian perceptions of religious, political and social issues and its own. There is a wealth of unlikely characters and incidents: evangelical Lord Radstock preaching to Petersburg aristocrats; Prince Golitzin falling for General Booth’s daughter; tabloid journalist W.T. Stead commending the Army to Peter Stolypin, tough but evasive Russian Prime Minister; Salvationist leader, Commissioner Henry Mapp, publicly embracing Katerina Breshko Breshkovskaya, “grandmother of the revolution”; and Cadet Seligman, a Jewish Salvationist, averting execution in impassioned debate with Bolshevik police. The narrative and analysis illustrate the difficulties The Salvation Army had learned to anticipate and was determined to overcome when it returned to Russia in 1990.
