Finding moments of beauty in the horrors of history

New Exhibition Caught in the Russian Revolution at the Parkinson Building, Leeds..Curator Richard Davies is pictured with a portrait of Reverend Lombard at the Exhibition.22nd February 2017 ..Picture by Simon Hulme

It was one of the most turbulent periods in modern history and an exhibition of personal and previously unseen material, which will be of national interest, is opening in Yorkshire.

Caught in the Russian Revolution: the British Community in Petrograd, 1917-1918 is the latest exhibition at the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery at the University of Leeds.

Opening on March 1, it marks the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which changed the course of world history and looks at it from a British perspective.

It draws on material from the Leeds Russian Archive, established 35 years ago, and the only archive in Britain dedicated to Russia specifically.

It includes eyewitness accounts in the form of diaries, letters, and photographs from what was by then a well established British community, only to become hugely disrupted following the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917.

Notable pieces include the patent of hereditary Russian nobility granted to ship building George Baird by Alexander II, in 1872 and also the prison mug, letters and drawings of Reverend Bousfield Swan Lombard, chaplain of the British Embassy, which date back to 1918.

Curator, Richard Davies said: “I could have put on 10 exhibitions without any difficulty and it was quite hard to select items.

“With these archives you have to take what is offered but every so often you will get strikingly beautiful things like the grant of nobility.”

He said that the the material is heavily used by Russian scholars and researchers so the exhibition will certainly be well known.