Wrangel on Russia

Baron Nicholas Wrangel, aged father of famed General Baron Wrangel who still holds together a "White Russian" army in Jugoslavia (TIME, Dec. 27), has just published most illuminating, if somewhat bloodcurdling memoirs.* He proceeds from his childhood (circa 1855) when a neighboring Count Visapur went unrestrained although he used to decorate his garden with pedestals on which stood all day statues improvised out of living serfs, stripped and painted white. In that era, Baron Wrangel's Aunt Jeanne would say, if anyone asked her the time, "Thank God, I have never been compelled to learn that!" and would display her watch to a serf who would announce the hour. . . .

Through a lifetime of Russian metamorphoses Baron Wrangel passes to the day when twelve "comrades" were apprehended torturing a lady of the aristocracy by tying against her person an iron pot containing a live, gnawing rat. Seldom has the complete inversion of Russia's civilization been more vividly sketched than by the Baron, who remained in Russia until 1920. Of all Russians he appears to despise most Alexander Kerensky (ne Kirbitz), calls him the "Grand Eunuch of the Revolution . . . puppet [of the Soviet leaders] . . . seemed more like a . . . girl . . . selling herself to the first person she meets. . . ."

* FROM SERFDOM TO BOLSHEVISM--Lippincott ($4).