Russian
Chapter 4: Russian Revolution
Before 1914, the Nemirovsky family settled in Saint Petersburg, capital of the Empire, in an "incoherent house" in the Kolomna district. Leonid, now a director of the Bank of the Union in Moscow and the Private Commercial Bank in St. Petersburg, moved closer to government circles. "The gold streamed, the wine flowed", but Irène Némirovsky will remember above all the flies and the stench of the city’s canals. In 1938, at the request of Le Figaro littéraire, she remembers the precise moment when the revolution of February 1917 horrified her: the mock execution of the concierge Ivan, in the courtyard of their building.
� Birth of a revolution. It was seen by a little girl: Le Figaro litt raire, June 4, 1938. Illustr article from a photo of the research. © Coll. O. Philipponnat
