ABSTRACT
In February 1917 the Russian monarchy was suddenly eliminated by the first of the year’s two Revolutions. It took the form of riots in Petrograd which precipitated the abdication of the Emperor Nicholas 11 at a time when few were expecting anything of the sort. When news of the February Revolution reached the poet he was still at Tikhiye Gory in the remote Urals. The work offers little in the way of plot or action, thus conforming with the assumption, characteristic of all the author's fiction, that events do not matter and that sensations are all-important. Whereas its predecessor had been a cloudburst, the new book was a burning. But they end on a sinister note, for the deceased Lenin the genius who had arrived as 'harbinger of bounties' is portrayed in the final line of the description as 'avenging his departure with oppression'.
